Synchronous Digital Ink in MSN Messenger

It's always nice to be cited and Birgit Loch and Christine McDonald have done so in "Synchronous Chat and Electronic Ink for Distance Support in Mathematics," Innovate, Feb/March 2007. They cite my 2004 work on Virtual Office Hours for students at a distance which pointed out that economists, statistician and mathematicians can't effectively communicate at a distance with the normal tools of a computer, with type and the mouse. They show the use of digital ink in MSN Messenger and show examples of mouse drawings. I would like to see this used with Tablet PCs where the precision of writing could improve with the use a pen. I am going to have to install MSN and give it a try. The advantage of this over Adobe Connect? It's free!