Banter

Banter is a next generation real time collaboration client focused on the big three: text, voice and video centered on a dynamic, innovative and easy to use contact management system. The project is focused on providing a simple quality experience for the end user.

why: Banter's focus is on collaboration with people. One method of collaboration is IM. Banter will initially be focused on the big three: Video, Audio, and Text chats. Banter's user experience will be around people (not buddies from specific services) and all the ways you work with them. Future collaboration methods may include email, blogs, photo sharing, whiteboarding, teaming, web conferencing, etc. Banter's goal is not to implement all of these services and technologies, but bring them together so the data around the people you collaborate with is all brought together.

Banter is available on the openSUSE build service and is currently in alpha.
This version only supports google IM.

packages on the build server

http://live.gnome.org/Banter/

Banter in openSUSE 10.3

Calvin's blog