email-2-IM?

November 5, 2006 2:31 AM

Do any of the major Instant Messaging services still provide a free email address that simply turns an incoming email address into an instant message like the old @pager.icq.com addresses used to?

I'm having heaps of problems with email and I'm moving over to IM, which appears to have matured a lot in the last couple of years. Everything's cool, except for services that require an email address for activation, or for sending forgotten passwords to.

Do any of the main players provide an email-2-IM gateway as part of a free service, or have they all moved to providing a separate email account with web access and only basic notification via the IM client?

posted by krisjohn to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Gmail Talk is close.
posted by vizsla at 3:21 AM on November 5, 2006

Hmm on second thoughts maybe not - Yahoo and MSN both have a mail notify in their messengers.
posted by vizsla at 3:24 AM on November 5, 2006

Well, ICQ still does it.
Simply ICQ#@pager.icq.com, no email setup required.

You can use Trillian (highly recommended) to combine all of your instant messenging accounts into a single interface and then use your @pager.icq.com email address inside Trillian. This way you aren't tied down to ICQ, which few people seem to use these days.
posted by sophist at 4:09 AM on November 5, 2006

As far as I know, the old ICQ gateway hasn't worked for years. A couple of recent tests tend to confirm that it's still down.

As for Trillian, I used to use Miranda IM, but there are just so many features being shovelled into the new IM clients that a single, unified client isn't an option -- particularly if you're trying to help other people use IM. And anyway, it's not like a PC won't run ICQ, Skype and "Windows Live Messenger" at the same time.
posted by krisjohn at 5:25 AM on November 5, 2006

Well, here's an apache mailet that sends IM email alerts.
posted by niles at 1:10 PM on November 5, 2006