MSN goes Jabber!

[ChO₂]

Dear List,

I just read at http://tinyurl.com/msnjabber that Microsoft has set up an
XMPP server that allows Jabber clients to connect to the MSN network.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has made it extremely complicated to use it. In
order to enable XMPP for my MSN account, I had to do the following
steps:

1) Send "SIGNUP" to xmpp-signup at microsoft.com by MSN.
2) Then I received an e-mail with a confirmation link
3) When I had clicked that link I had to fill in many personal details
that are not required for a regular MSN account. I also had to solve a
captcha and enter a credit card number because Microsoft charges $20 per
year for XMPP access.
4) Finally, I had to figure out myself how to connect to the server.
Microsoft hasn't made the connection details public and it's not
trivial.
 user name:   user!domain
 domain:      jabber.messenger.live.com
This domain seems to lack SRV records, so I had to enter the actual
server myself:
 server:      xmpp-client.messenger.live.com
 port:        15222 (!)


The server lets me speak to other MSN users and it even supports
federation. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have limited federation to
GoogleTalk and Facebook's XMPP server (The latter didn't support
Federation until now and now it is limited to MSN). Facebook and
Microsoft have also limited federation to actual XMPP clients, so the
original MSN client and Facebook's web interface will remain unable to
federate with any other XMPP service. The MSN XMPP server also doesn't
seem to talk to Yahoo as Yahoo buddies just don't show up on the roster.

I hope that this doesn't end like AOL's XMPP server which was shut down
after a short time and never came back.

Cheers,
Chemistrydioxide