The AIM folks at AOL have a chumby prototype.  I'm not sure what's going to happen there, but they seemed very interested in it.

Certainly a chumby could at least indicate AIM presence, so you can see if/when your buddies come online without sitting in front of your computer.  You could also have a set of canned messages you could send with a touch.  It might also be possible to layer some other reasonable chumby-specific communication over their system - obviously with their blessing.

So I think it's at least something to consider.

you dont need a bulky virtual touch screen keyboard.  The chumby has a USB port, correct?  So plug in a keyboard to the port, and wah lah!

I like the idea of AIM on the Chumby, but I wouldn't use it.

A keyboard is not condusive to looking up from my morning coffee.  It does not belong on my bookshelf next to my favorite reading chair.  I keyboard would have to sit on my lap or surface and would require repositioning.  I don't want that from a chumby.  My laptop does that fine.

I wouldn't mind a twitter feed reader however.  Nor would I mind some sort of update or announcement when someone wants to get ahold of me, so I can move to my PC.  But I don't feel like replying with more than a canned message via chumby

If the Chumby could put me in an "Away: only on chumby" State, I would be pleased as punch.

I'm kinda wondering if the pidgin (www.pidgin.im) source could be modded into a flash interface. I'm not really a flash designer (yet) so my knowledge of the systems is fairly limited. The only thing that stands out in my mind as an issue is the lack of established text entry (*hint hint*) Anyways I'm not entirely sure how much I'd use it but it seems like a cool idea so if anyone wants to pick this project up that would be awesome.

There are webbased emulators for AIM/messaging programs, but i know that specifically AIM has a web-app. Would it be possible to interface with this? While I'm not much of an AIM user, the possibility of messaging should be tackled.

I've looked into a lot of different programs, but they will all take up too much resources, taking into account backend processes.

There was a text-based one that ran in the terminal, but thats no fun

What about a terminal emulator with a text based instant messenger. While on that route, a terminal based web browser like e-links would be great.
There are a ot of CLI based apps that could be ported to the chumby if we had a terminal and on screen keyboard going for it.

Just a thought.

irssi+bitlbee is one backend solution that would support all IM protocols