Summary of MSG open source instant messenger created at The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute

1. Custom Map Messaging & Presence for Learners The evolution of “MSG” Marc Eisenstadt, Chris Denham, & Alex Little Knowledge Media Institute The Open University March 2007

5. Click-to-launch; no download (runs in a web browser window)

6. Click-to-chat

7. Custom Map Launcher

9. World Map launcher

10. Google Maps MSG “clusters”

11. Google Maps Dynamic re-clustering

12. Google Maps All map features

13. Google Maps Click -to-chat

14. Instant notification

15. Selective views

16. “ Presence everywhere”: Postings annotated with live status, facilitating “click-to-chat now ” (any user can opt out of this)

17. “ Desktop notification widget”: lights up when new messages appear

18. Both ELeGI-i and ELeGI-f! MSG status persistently displayed in the IWTGA banner.

19. Clicking on green bullet will open MSG Client in a new window When any authorized user logs in to the IWTGA portal they will automatically be logged in to MSG too.

20. Click on green bullet will open MSG Client in a new window When any authorized user logon into IWTGA portal it will automatically logged into MSG too. Chatting with Chris … Note the “!” status alert change

22. Acknowledgements MSG client & server systems: Chris Denham Moodle integration and MSG Presence Maps: Alex Little BuddySpace.org (original concepts and implementation): Jiri Komzak, Martin Dzbor Graphics and site: Peter Devine, Harriett Cornish, Damian Dadswell Project principal investigator: Marc Eisenstadt MSG is partly supported by the European Community under the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme of the 6th Framework Programme for RTD - project ELeGI, contract IST-002205. This software and its documentation do not represent the opinion of the European Community, and the European Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of the data and tools appearing herein. MSG Software is available at http://msg.open.ac.uk We also gratefully acknowledge support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for enabling us to extend MSG to become part of the larger “Open Content Initiative” OpenLearn project at the Open University (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn) http://msg.open.ac.uk