Mobile instant messaging

We describe a mobile instant messaging system, MIM, designed for mobile environments. During the design of mobile applications, several new problems and possibilities have to be considered that do not exist with applications targeted at desktop PCs. One example of an application not designed for a mobile environment is the current, very popular, instant messaging, typified by systems such as ICQ, AIM and MSN Messenger. We describe why current systems are not suitable in a mobile environment, and present our architecture for a new system, MIM, and show various implementations for different mobile devices such as PDAs, wearable computers and mobile phones.