SNIMMER 1.0

SNIMMER stands for Single Network Instant Messaging Mediation and Relay. SNIMMER can talk to any IM network, and can relay instant messages from one IM network to another.

Currently, one cannot use AOL messenger to chat with users on MSN, Yahoo!, or GTalk and vice-versa. SNIMMER overcomes instant messenger non-interoperability.

It has been designed primarily to help webmasters to chat with Web visitors on any IM network using any instant messenger.

What you will need:

1) Internet connection
2) IM account that you always use
3) Create a set of IM accounts for all networks (eg. AOL, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN) that you want to receive visitors from. It is essential that you create brand new accounts that were not used by you for personal chat, otherwise snimmer will clash with you online.
4) Web server where you can run a CGI script. A sample script that comes with this package is written in python but you can re-write it in your favorite language - it is very simple.
5) You neeed Python to be installed on your web server. Also you will need python-xmpp library installed too.

You can grab python here: http://www.python.org/

XMPPPY library download:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=97081&package_id=103821

6) You should know how to add CGI scripts to pages and how to display results. Sample script works but youll probably want a better integration with your page.
7) You have to know what jabber servers and what jabber transports you are going to use.

You can deploy your own or you can try the ones that are publicly available. You can refer to this page to find the server for you:

http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.shtml

In the simplest case youll need to replace example.com with the name of the server you have picked. Though it is not neccessary that transport should be on the same server. You can use transports from other servers if their policies allow that.

How to install it:

1) get it from http://www.snimmer.com/snimmer/snimmer.tar and unpack it
2) open credentials.py with a text editor. You will see something like this (lines numbers are added for readability - they should not be present in the actual file):

1 clients={
2 snimmer@example.com:{
3 login:snimmer,
4 server:example.com,
5 password:snimmer,
6 transports:{
7 xmpp:(example.com,,),
8 # icq:(icq.example.com,123456789,ICQ_password,),
9 # yahoo:(yahoo.example.com,Yahoo_login,Yahoo_password),
10 # msn:(msn.example.com,MSN_login@hotmail.com,MSN_password),
11 # aim:(aim.example.com,AIM_screenname,AIM_password),
13 },
14 },
15
16 ## This is another connection. If you want to be able to receive two calls at the same time
17 ## uncomment it. To receive even more calls - add more such sections
18 # snimmer2@example.com:{
19 # login:snimmer2,
20 # server:example.com,
21 # password:snimmer,
22 # transports:{
23 # icq:(icq.example.com,123456780,ICQ_password2,),
24 # },
25 # },
26
27 }
28
29 SPOOL=rc:snimmerspool
30 SPOOL=r/tmp/snimmerspool
31
32 publisher_im=icq
33 publisher_screenname=123456789
34
35 blocked_ips=blocked.txt