We’ve all undoubtedly seen the chain-letter email messages that circulate around telling you that by forwarding the email you will make money or receive gifts and most people with half a clue understand that this kind of thing is pretty much impossible.  So it was with a whole lot of skepticism that I first greeted Microsoft’s “i’m” campaign because the premise is: for every IM conversation you have with Windows Live Messenger, we’ll donate some money to the nonprofit of your choice (from among nine choices).  To me, it sounded just a wee bit fishy.   In reading the “About” page you do learn a bit more.  First:

Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. We’ve set no cap on the amount we’ll donate to each organization. The sky’s the limit. There’s no charge, so join now and put our money where your mouth is.

and then this:

Once you’ve signed up, every ad you see in your message window contributes to the grand total we send to the causes.

So it’s all about a portion of…

(Continuing my effort to flush my “queue of things I want to blog about”…)

Last week, per Rich Lafferty, I learned that there are now “unofficial” versions of native Blackberry clients available for AIM, MSN/WLM and ICQ.  I used WebMessenger a bit in the past and found it useful, but stopped using it for some reason I can’t exactly recall…  in any event, I’ll be curious to try out native Blackberry versions.   Of course, I can’t right now.  I naturally tried to download the MSN/WLM client and was told that “this messaging service is not supported by your service provider” (Verizon).  Ah, well, I’ll just have to wait a while.  I don’t really need IM on my blackberry, but every once in a great while there’s a time when I’m travelling and IM would be great to have.

Technorati tags: blackberry, rim, aim, msn, icq, im