Perhaps you could explain a bit better the rationale behind this. It might also build up interest among those who haven't realised what the benefits of these tools would be.
Fair enough. The most important aspect for me would be the email aliasing. Imagine a YOURUSERNAME@wikibooks.org, or even @wikibookian.org. This would make it look more "official" for when we are having to do business on behalf of Wikibooks. If we're trying to keep in touch with a class project, or if we are trying to secure a book donation, an "official" looking email address would do a lot for our credibility. For instance, when I am sending an email to a professor or to one of my students, I use my school address.
Blogging is another big deal. On wikibooks, we once voted (and this may be an issue we could reopen, if there were enough support) to not allow our users to blog on Wikibooks. Wikiversity allows it's users to blog directly on-wiki in their user pages. These blogs, of course, have to be on topic. I wanted to have a blog about Wikibooks, so I had to go to an external site and start one up myself. This extra effort, plus the need to create a new account at a blogging site will be a turn off to many people. If we put a blog in front of people though, and say "this is open for wikibookians to use with no hassle" I think more people will use it. This also allows people to keep their blogs tied in to their regular wikibooks accounts.
Having an embedded IRC client available will also, hopefully, increase participating in the chat rooms. Only a few people do participate in the chat room, but it's a resource that I think we should use more often. On the occasions when multiple admins are in the chatroom, dealing with problems or vandalism becomes trivial because of the instantaneous communication. Many people do not have IRC clients, and would probably be intimidated by them anyway. By having an embedded IRC client available, we could help increase participation in this.
These are just a few of the points that seem to have attracted the most interest, this is certainly not an exhaustive list. The key point is that this kind of tool would make it easier for people to communicate with each other, and it would make it easier for new users to get involved with the community.
Our community has voted once before to not allow blogging on-wiki,
How about just aggregating posts from various blogs.
Again, people would have to create their own blogs on an external site, which may not be an attractive option for many people. Aggregating from existing blogs may be nice, but I want to make the whole process of blogging more easy, and more accessible.
*Ability to host personal information, including images, which are not freely-licensed
What would this be for?
This is actually an issue that was more of a problem on Wikiversity, and it's not something that we've really had to deal with, yet. Consider the case of an image of yourself: Several users, myself included, post images of themselves on their user page. The problem with the current set-up is that to post a picture of myself, I must release it under a free license. This means that other people can use my picture in ways that I might not necessarily approve of beforehand. Of course, this opens the issue of whether we want to post pictures of ourselves online anyway, but I'm side-stepping that question.
We at Wikibooks have voted before to not allow people to post things like resumes on-wiki. This follows pretty directly from the 'not a personal webhost' clause. However, I think that we can do things to promote our active contributors, such as hosting resumes. This is a topic that we could talk a long time about, so i'll just drop it for now.
*Embedded IRC client with access to #Wikibooks, #cvn-wb-en, and #en.wikibooks *Applets and other tools specific to wikibooks (similar to the toolserver, but primarily for wikibooks)
Can this not be done on the same server with the same hostname, but off-wiki (e.g. wikibooks.org/tools/)?
I'm sure lots of things "can" be done that will probably never be accomplished. We would need to get these kinds of programs installed by the devs, and that would likely require all sorts of testing for performance and security, etc. Also, that would put additional (albeit small) strain on the servers, and that's something that nobody would want. Having a separate website that we (wikibookians) develop and maintain would keep this strain off our developers, off our hardware, etc. If we are going to do any of this stuff, I want to do it without creating any stress on other people.
I hope this answered some questions, sorry for the verbosity.
--Andrew Whitworth