The cutesy coverage of instant messaging — "CU l8r 2 IM," writes Ben Smith in Politico — is foolishly dismissive, failing to recognize that a generation which grew up with IM at home has made it indispensable at work.

White House records-keeping rules require that all written communications be archived for posterity, including IM, so government lawyers are inclined to ban it from Obama's administration. And the answer is, well, they'll just have to pick up the phone. Are they clueless? Try having a dozen simultaneous conversations on the phone.

The real issue is the risk of embarrassment when an administration's documents become a matter of public record five years after the president leaves office. Private, casual conversations will all be exposed.

There's an obvious answer — one that the Obama campaign has inexplicably adopted, then abandoned.

Twitter has become a sort of public instant-messenger for the tech elite, who chatter at each other all day with "@" replies. Most Twitter messages are public, and the embarrassment is instantaneous. Why not get it over with? By Twittering every little policy thrash, the Obamans can satisfy their leader's desire for transparency and meet disclosure rules.

Jabber isn't just another AIM wannabe. It uses XML trickery to connect to every popular instant message service — AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo — and to let programmers connect it to other services, be they for man or machine. It's already widely adopted by the IT workers whose managers sign the purchase orders for Cisco networking hardware.

By building Jabber support into its switchers and routers, Cisco can make it easy for admins to get alerts from their hardware in the same IM window as their buddies. Cisco can also sell companywide IM setups that are closely tied to Cisco network gear for security and monitoring.

Cisco recently picked up PostPath, which makes Linux-based email, calendar and collaboration software. I'm sure someone at Cisco plans to bundle Jabber's instant messaging with PostPath's Outlook-like features and dub it a "platform" to compete with Microsoft.

But Jabber's main competition isn't Redmond, it's Dulles. Cisco can now offer managers a way to ban AIM from the workplace, or at least to manage it locally with Cisco equipment rather than routing employees' conversations straight to AOL.

This oustandingly well-done music video is nearly a year old. But even online-TV maven Nick Douglas says he's never seen it, so it's today's mindless lunchtime entertainment. Tip for the Olds: The song is a rewrite of Puddle of Mudd's "She Fucking Hates Me." Tip for the Youngs: The graphics are from an ancient MMORPG called RuneScape that dates back to January 2001 — they didn't even have iPods then!

From what we've heard, MyM sounds a lot like Meebo, the website which allows users to access multiple instant-messaging clients at once. MyM will actually hook into Meebo, as well as Friendster, MySpace, LiveJournal, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo's own IM software. Internally at Yahoo, MyM's already been dubbed "awkward," and some are worried that competitors will block it.

I'd say those concerns are typical of Yahoo these days — suggest something new, and people come up with reasons why you can't do it, rather than fixes for those problems. Awkward or not, it's to these Yahoos' credit that they actually managed to launch something against internal opposition. We're still skeptical that Yahoo needs yet another social service, but we're intrigued all the same. Anyone got an invite? Send it in.