I know that I'm behind the times and all, but this was still a novel experience for me. Via IM, I just talked ashacat through FTPing photos from India to our FTP site. Different. Far more chaotic than emailing someone a set of detailed instructions (and hoping for the best), but also far more immediate -- and effective. She's up and running, and forty-nine of the hundred images have uploaded. I can see why support organizations have embraced IM for support.

Asha is off having dinner while FTP does its thing. "MPUT *.jpg" is a wonderful thing, especially when paired with FTP's "-i" option (suppresses interactive y/n prompting). Yay FTP! Yay IM!