Barack Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, uses AIM to communicate, as does most of his youthful staff. How will they survive in a government bureaucracy where everything goes down on your permanent record?

Why is a router maker buying Jabber, an open-source AIM clone? Disgruntled network admins (I'm still one in my heart) understand what Cisco's own press release doesn't spell out in English.Jabber isn't just another AIM wannabe. It uses XML trickery to connect to every popular instant message service — AIM, ICQ,…

Buried on the bottom edge of your browser, Facebook's new instant-messaging feature "is meant to be really unobtrusive and there when you need it," explains Facebook project manager Peter Deng in a video demonstrating Facebook Chat, below. We know it's unobtrusive because Mark Zuckerburg put Facebook's easily missed…

Meebo, the Web-based chat startup, is running chat rooms for the 3:30 p.m. debut of Britney Spears's latest video, the anime-inspired "Break the Ice." Great: A scalable real-time communications infrastructure allowing thousands of teenage girls to say, "OMG, Britney." Isn't that what text messages are for? [Blackout…

pareene: omg sheila is in JAIL
nick: hunh?
nick: what?
pareene: ha! her mom just emailed me. she was picked up for drinking in public last night!
nick: and they put you in jail for that?
pareene: if they feel like it!
pareene: i mean usually no but it's not unheard of. she probably mouthed off.
pareene: ANYWAY we are…

A Microsoft-Yahoo merger would give Microsoft control of more than 90 percent of email and instant messaging traffic worldwide. But when a reporter from AdAge asked Microsoft VP Yusuf Mehdi about it, he shushed her. "The core of the combination is around search and advertising," Mehdi said, "The other allegations…

"It might not have quite the innuendo of For Your Eyes Only, or even the ooh matron oomph of Octopussy, but the title of the new James Bond film has finally been made public. And it is Quantum of Solace." [Guardian] How the hell will anyone sing a brassy pop song about that? (Your bloggers discuss, below.)

23/6 is the political satire website from the Huffington Post and IAC. You know, sort of an Onion for the crowd that goes to College Humor for the biting wit. Now's your chance to get the sure-to-be-valuable commemorative 23/6 t-shirt! Look how excited one recipient is:

"How was work?" asked my Mom yesterday. "Urghhh," I said. Mom waited patiently. "Well, it was nice to touch base with everyone," I said. "Oh, because you have to email back and forth about who's posting about what?" "We don't email, Mom, we instant message each other, and mostly we're just talking." It was true:…

Yahoo has launched, in an invitation-only trial, MyM, a "social messaging" service. How many social networks does one company need? Nowhere are Yahoo's scattershot efforts more evident than in this field. On top of Yahoo Mash, Yahoo 360, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and — if you believe Yahoo president Sue Decker — Yahoo…

Crazed uber-commenter Lolcait was a Theater/English double major in college, did you know that? Also when he first moved to New York he worked for Telecharge Group Sales and he got to see a lot of plays. So basically he is a theater critic. He will occasionally bring his expertise to bear on the talked-about plays of…

We remember it like it was a few minutes ago: We were breezing along, eleven windows open, chatting with all our friends about "The Hills," when suddenly, for no reason, everything went dead. The last thing we saw was "i think audrina is, literally, retarded," and then, boom, disconnected! WHAT A NIGHTMARE! We almost…

From the mailbag: "What is an acceptable time for the non-observant Jew to leave the office today? 4? Is 3:30 pushing it?" Well, ONE non-observant Jew who won't be named just left here at 3:12, so we'd say you're safe to go now!

Perhaps you have noticed that I am obsessed with the MTV "reality" show The Hills. It seems like a lot of you are, too! And, like, every celebrity magazine, and even Real Newspapers, are too. At first, it sort of seemed like a joke, like a so-bad-it's-good sort of thing. We were only being ironic as we watched! But…

Balk BTW: Okay, sorry about this, I don't want to bring you down or anything, but I have to ask. Whaddya think about that study that shows that the elderly are still getting it on? This one:
Balk BTW: "The study of 3005 adults aged 57 to 85 found most had an active sex life with a partner or spouse. More than half of…