Whose technology do you choose? There are some clear market leaders in Instant Messaging marketing including Microsoft (no surprise here) http://messenger.microsoft.com But, like most Microsoft technology ools you pay a price for software/services, albeit a small one. You have to register with Microsoft's NET Passport www.microsoft.com/myservices/passport service which is designed to be a universal login - this only takes a few minutes but be forewarned they also try to get you to setup a Hot Mail account, but you can work around this.

The other dominant IM product is AOL's ICQ product http://web.icq.com - it has similar functionality as Microsoft's application. A great Israeli company, Mirabellis, Inc., subsequently acquired by AOL, developed original technology. My chief complaint with this product is irritating banner ads that AOL keeps pushing at you when you are utilizing their product. But, it's a small price to pay for a free product on client side.

Yahoo also has an IM product ("Yahoo Messenger") but I am not convinced this will stay as a core part of their business, as they appear to be still trying to figure out what they are going to become in post ".com gold rush era" market; i.e. Portal, Directory, Media giant, software/services company, etc. And, they've certainly jettisoned parts of their business last 12-18 months and I would wager they've had discussions about getting out of IM business.

Finally, IM is also quickly moving into other markets and devices including PDAs and Pagers - if you're a real geek and you can't stand to be out of touch while your in shower and you have a water proof device you can ping away. But, I think we all need some down time for friends and family, but wanted to make sure I covered all possible bases with this column - until next time!

Personally, I don't care whether or not something is open source, closed source, proprietary, GNU or anything else. The software must meet needs of project or it's useless. The Software must be maintainable and have a reasonable promise of future maintenance. It must perform all required functions and as many optional functions as needed. The product must have a good ROI (return on investment) as well.

I've been managing large projects for 25 years, and return on investment is usually part that is missed by most technical people. We look at cost of a product and think, "wow, this is free and this is $425, I'll get free one".

That equation, unfortunately, does not work. The cost of a product must be measured over it's entire lifetime and includes many variables. These include training (teaching people how to use it and keep it going as well as changing it), maintenance, security, hardware, "fit" to requirements, and dozens (if not hundreds) of other things. I've found that once ALL of variables are factored in, Microsoft does not come out as bad as most people would like to think.

Microsoft is being a little heavy handed here, and I'm somewhat surprised that US Government is playing along. I don't see any vital US interests threatened.

However, one must remember that there were no vital US interests threatened in Guatemala in 1950s. There were just Dole banana farms, which were in danger of being taken over by democratic government. So good old president Eisenhower ordered CIA to overthrow that government and replaced it with a much less democratic version, which, of course, was "smart enough" to leave Dole banana farms alone. Don't believe me, read your history books. (This is one of more despicable chapters in American history - aiding in overthrow of a legitimate government so that some banana company would not be inconvenienced.)

Point being government may not in actually have a vital interest at stake, but officials may, or large corporations which have contributed lots of money may as well. This might make government do things which, on face of it, make no sense (and on deeper analysis still don't make any sense).

So am I opposed to Microsoft's attempt to stop Peru? Of course as it is meddling in affairs of another country. Do I understand why it's doing this? Of course. And do I understand why US government is playing along? Sure, it's pretty obvious.