• OTR (Off the Record Messaging) Plugin for Apple’s iChat

Why OTR?

Because it provides privacy and authenticity of your chat communication by encryption.

Why an iChat Plugin

iChat is used by many people because it is a very comfortable application.

Why not use Adium instead? It already does support OTR.

Adium is not iChat. (Duh) I consider Adium a very nice and quite powerful chat client for a gazillion of protocols and even more settings. This complexity is too much for many users. i also consider the user interface of Adium inferior in regard to usability. I personally just prefer iChat over Adium because I feel more comfortable in using it.

There is an OTR Proxy that can be used with iChat

I consider myself sufficently nerdy and technically inclined to expect I can make this work. Yet I couldn’t. In addition to that it only works with AIM an not Jabber which makes it useless for anyone using Jabber, Gtalk, GMX Messenger, Facebook chat, or a private company Jabber account.

Any takers of that challenge? You may also want to contact Kent Sutherland to convince him, or even help with implementing OTR in his awesome Chax extension for iChat. According to his FAQ Kent is already evaluating to build this in. If you can help to make this happen, please do!