While not especially PHP-related, I have had lots of people ask for something like this in the past and just wanted to share it with everyone. There's a few main messenger clients that everyone these days seems to use - things like AOL-IM, Yahoo IM, and, of course, MSN Messenger. Well, it's this last one that seems to be a bit more shrouded in mystery when it comes to connecting things to it. DevArticles is about to burst that bubble.

In their newest article, The MSN Messenger Protocol Torn Apart: Part 1/3, they dive right into the way that the MSN Messanger communicates, and how to make something that will communicate right along with it. Now let me tell you why I choose msn messenger and not any other. Firstly, I use msn messenger a lot more than any other messenger. Secondly, on searching, I found out that Microsoft (to my surprise) has published an official protocol draft on the msn messenger protocol - It is quite informative. I also came across a few tutorials on the net which had explained bits about the msn messenger protocol. Those too were quite helpful.

The protocol is pretty complex and not very intuitive - but this article still does a great job with getting the general idea of the commands and the syntax for a few samples across. And this is just the first part of the series!