Is there an Instant Messenging client for Windows that will communicate with Apple's iChat over Rendezvous/ZeroConfig?

There was talk of iChat supporting Jabber way back when. I don't know whatever became of it.

Porchdog's http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/ enables Zeroconf/Rendezvous on Windows. That seems like half the solution, maybe.

I've played around with the http://sourceforge.net/projects/jmdns/ and you can see the iChat users and their usernames. Since iChat people can be hit through the AIM gateways, you can tack @mac.com on to their username and contact them that way. But you don't get any of the iChat cutesy icons or what not, just standard AIM text.

Not exactly an answer to your question, but perhaps a solution for your problem: At work we run an IRC server internally for all our behind-the-firewall chit-chatting needs. (We have lots of remote employees, so this actually is a huge part of our daily communication.) IRC isn't (just) for text-console geeks any more; there are plenty of gooey desktop IRC apps nowadays (e.g., http://www.xchat.org for Win and X11, http://www.conversation.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ for OSX)—including several multiprotocol beasts (e.g., Trillian for Windows, http://fire.sourceforge.net/ for OSX) which will allow you to use the internal IRC for work and still keep in touch with your outside-the-firewall AOL/iChat friends. (Server software: we're using http://freenode.net/dancer_ircd.shtml at the moment, but there are dozens of variants.)

An alternative solution would be to use a multiuser talk program like ytalk, which allows for point-to-point messenging. I like it a lot better than any IM programs but then I might just be too nostalgic of the good ol' times before IM became popular.

I use iChat, and connect with my Windows "friends" on AOL Instant Messenger. Smilies work.