Hi Mark,
I'm in the process of changing NetTalk 5 over from prototype to jQuery. so I've been doing some reading on jQuery, Prototype, and JavaScript in general.
The whole "shorthand" thing of change jQuery to $ (while _knowing_ that it makes tools incompatible with each other) is, well, frankly bizarre to me.
I think, without going into the script you are using, if you replace all instances of $ in the code with jQuery, and you turn on the NoConflict switch, then it may work.
Or wait for NT5, which won't have prototype, so won't have the problem.
Cheers
Bruce