It's been a while since AOL launched an updated version if its instant messenger for Windows Mobile. The new version is still in beta, but it has some nifty features that make it worth checking out. The first thing you'll notice is that the interface is much more attractive. But it's also more useful.
When you first login you're greeted with a buddy list. You can double tap on any contact to enter a chat window. After you've initiated a chat you can flip back to your buddy list knowing that you'll be able to see all open chats and any new messages in the sidebar that now pops up.
You can also manage your buddy list from the client. And the settings menu has a nice array of options letting you customize your notification, conversation, and privacy settings.
This beta supports devices running Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.
Pidgin doesn't officially support Facebook Chat (yet?), but it can be customized with useful add-ons like the new Facebook Chat plug-in. Once installed, the plug-in allows Pidgin to log-in to a Facebook account, pull the buddy-list, and send/receive messages.
Adium, arguably Pidgin's counterpart on Mac, also received support for Facebook Chat in the recent 1.3 beta release, though, the feature is absent from the most recent official update. If you're a risk-taker who enjoys putting his/her computer in jeopardy for the sake of testing new software, give it a shot.
We've also covered a couple of other methods of taking Facebook Chat outside the site:
There's a Firefox plug-in that adds the social-network's IM service to a sidebar.
For Windows XP and Mac OS X, Gabtastik wants to take your browser chatting to the desktop where a lot us feels that it should stay. The program takes you to a page just like a web browser would to log in. It did seem a little slow to pull in Facebook data. That could be an issue.
You can switch back and forth between Facebook chat and Google, as well as change the opacity of the application itself so that it doesn't become an annoyance by overpowering your desktop. Make it invisible if that floats your boat.
This is a great way to not be tethered to either site via browser 24/7 and still be in contact with your friends who either are tethered or are cool enough to use something like Gabtastik. The downside is that you still have to have AIM or iChat up along with this if you use them too.
Gabtastik calls itself a "Site Specific Browser" for web chat services, so will other services be included as they pop up as well? Let's hope so!
Gabtastik is not the first to do pull these services away from their respective sites, Digsby handles it, and so does a sweet Firefox trick.
AOL is getting serious about opening up its popular instant messenger application. A few months ago the company launched the Open AIM initiative, making available the APIs and documentation developers need to add AIM features to third party applications or to develop third party plugins for AIM. Now AOL, which happens to be this blog's parent company, has announced the winners of a $100,000 design competition. Winning entries included applications that let you:
Instantly translate messages from one language to another
Preview an URL in an IM by hovering your mouse over it
Manage your RSS feeds from within AIM
Share your desktop with another AIM user
Convert text-based instant messages to speech
Nine winners scored $10,000, while 20 more winners got $500 prizes. You can check out a list of winner and see all the submissions at the TopCoder contest page.
While there are several desktop instant messaging applications that allow you to chat with Facebook users, Digsby is one of the first 3rd party applications to add support for Facebook's new native chat feature. Digsby pushed out an updated version of its chat/social networking/email notification application this afternoon. The latest update brings the list of supported instant messengers to:
AOL
MSN
Yahoo!
Google Talk
ICQ
Jabber
Facebook
The Facebook chat feature supports status messages, popup notifications, and buddy icons. The latest Digsby release also features updates for Yahoo! Mail with support for international email addresses and support for the beta version of the Yahoo! Mail web site. The update also fixes all known issues with Proxy support.
A little over a year ago, Microsoft announced a program that sounded just so crazy it could... be crazy. The company's i'm Initiative lets Windows Live Messenger users choose from a list of charities, and then every time they send an instant message, Microsoft will donate a small amount of money to that charity.
While this all sounded a bit silly to us last year, Microsoft has now donated $1.3 million dollars to ten charities through the program.
Of course, the money doesn't come from nowhere. Essentially, Microsoft agrees to donate a small amount of its advertising revenue to the charity of your choice. And the company really could have done that without asking you to sign up for a program. But then how would you know about this big charitable thing Microsoft was doing?
Microsoft says the initiative has been a success over the past year, which has prompted the company to continue the program.
Google Talk Labs edition is a new desktop version of Google Talk that borrows some features from the online Google Talk Gadget, including the addition of Group Chat, emoticons and more.
Google Talk Labs edition also adds new desktop notifications from Google Calendar, Orkut, and Gmail.
Unfortunately, it skimps on a few of the desktop features, and seems more like an intermediate step toward a full-featured desktop Chat application rather than its fulfillment. The most notable missing features are voice calling and file transfers. If you need those, you're better off with the original Google Talk client.
We hope that, in the near future, Google can round up all of its Chat features into one application. Until then, you'll have to pick and choose which features are important to you, and download or use the appropriate Google Talk service.
Will Smith and Kevin Bacon may both know that there's no more than six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet. But the folks at Microsoft's research division now have quantifiable proof. Well, sort of.
Microsoft Research did a bit of analysis with raw MSN messenger data. Without actually reading any private messages, (the data all remained anonymous) the team tracked the trajectory of 255 billion instant messages sent by 240 million people in June of 2006. Researchers were able to see where the message started and where it ended up.
In the end, you get a pretty map like the one above showing where MSN Messenger users are located. And you can also see which users are chatting it up with one another. And in the end, the team concluded that you could pretty much make a connection between any random MSN Messenger user and another with just 6.6 connections. In other words, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend and a half of yours knows the person you may have just sent a message to.
Of course, the data only covers MSN Messenger statistics and doesn't take into account all the people using AOL, Yahoo!, or Google messengers, not to mention all the folks who don't IM or even have access to computers at all. But next time someone tells you that whole six degrees thing if bunk, now you can point them toward empircal(ish) proof.
Simkl is a web service that saves your instant message history to its servers so that you can access that searchable history from any computer with Internet access. You'll need a Simkl account and some money (1 month of archiving is $2.99 and one year is $24.99). You'll also have to change a setting in your IM client to use Simkl as a proxy (so that it can save your messages).
If the thought of a third party (besides the actual service provider) archiving your instant messages doesn't bother you, you can try out the service for a week for free. The history viewer is web-based, and you can do full-text searches on your IM history.
Simkl supports most of the popular IM clients including Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Pidgin, iChat, ICQ, Trillian, and Adium. Keep in mind that many of these IM clients like Pidgin and Trillian can log your chats individually, but if you use multiple computers with different IM clients, Simkl can unify your IM logging.
There's a new feature in town for Gmail Chat, but it's actually not all that new. It's been possible for some time now to go into "invisible" mode via AIM and other chat protocols, but Gmail Chat is finally joining the invisible party.
Going invisible through chat software enables IMers to log into their IM accounts without showing that they've logged on. It's still possible for others to IM you, though it's unlikely since you wouldn't be listed as "online", and you can also IM others.
Invisible mode in Gmail Chat doesn't yet work with Google Talk, the gadget and desktop app. Currently, it's only supported via the online Gmail interface, but we're sure that'll change soon.
Tangler is a web service that lets anyone create a pretty nifty discussion forum. It takes just a few seconds to sign up and create a forum which you can then invite your friends to participate in. But the word forum doesn't really do justice to Tangler.
Sure, you can create topics and respond to comments left by other users in each topic in the forum. But unlike old fashioned forums or bulletin boards, Tangler updates its forums automatically. No page refreshing required. So a Tangler forum is really more like a cross between a traditional forum and an instant messenger, complete with buttons for embedding images, links, and online videos in your comments.
Now Tangler has added the ability for users to embed a forum topic on any web page. You can't embed the entire forum, just a single thread. But this can come in handy if you want to add an enhanced comments section to a particular blog post. Say you want to let people comment on your latest podcast, or live-blogging an event. Wouldn't it be nice if people could leave comments and respond to other users' comments in real-time?
Effectively, an embedded Tangler topic works much like a Meebo chat room which you can also embed on any web page. The difference is that an embedded Tangler topic is part of a larger forum which you can direct visitors to in order to participate in conversations on other topics.
You can check out a demo Tangler topic after the jump.
Just a week after Digsby widened its private beta by giving away 5,000 invites to Download Squad readers, the development team has already issued 4 new builds of the chat, email, and social networking client. Probably the most significant new feature is support for proxy settings to help users get around corporate firewalls.
There are a ton of other bug fixes and minor new features as well, including:
A fix for "connection lost" issue when logging in
A fix for MSN Messenger IMs not being sent
A fix for Digsby getting stuck while loading skins during the login
A fix for freezes while logging into Yahoo! Messenger
Ctrl + Backapsace now deletes one word at a time in the input box
If you already have a Digsby account, you can either download the latest client from the Digsby home page or just fire up Digsby on your PC if it's already installed. The client will download all the updates automatically. While the lack of proxy support was one of the main complaints we heard from users last week, there's one other issue we'd love to see Digsby work on: The program's large memory footprint. Digsby can easily use 70MB or more at launch. Considering how many functions the service has, that might not seem like a lot, but similar applications like Pidgin use just a small fraction of the RAM that Digsby does.
Ever wish there was an easy way to let visitors to your web site chat with you without giving out your IM contact info? Plugoo lets you embed a chat widget on any web page. You can customize the look and feel of the widget, change its size, and decide whether visitors need to enter their name to send you a message.
But here's the coolest part: When someone sends you a message using Plugoo, it will be forwarded to you regular IM account. You can forward messages to AOL IM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messnger, Google Talk, Jabber, or ICQ. And you don't even have to give Plugoo your login information for your chat client, since all the service does is forward messages.
Once you add the widget to your site, you can continue to customize it by logging into your Plugoo account. Any changes you make in your account settings will be reflected on your blog or web page.
You can also chat with other Plugoo members by visiting the Planet Plugoo member of the company's web site. But honestly, the embeddable widget is really where Plugoo shines.
We're suckers for all-in-one applications. That's why we were excited to check out Digsby, a new all-in-one utility for managing multiple IM, e-mail, and social networking accounts. Digsby just launched in private beta this week, but we've got 5000 invites to give away to Download Squad readers. Keep on reading to find out how to get yours.
Digsby is a desktop client that lets you chat with contacts no matter which IM service they use. It also includes an e-mail notifier, and a pop up screen for keeping track of Facebook and MySpace updates. You can even add a Digsby chat window to your Facebook page so that anyone viewing your profile can send you instant messages which you can reply to using Digsby.
KonoLive is launching a new "instant collaboration" service at DEMO this week. The company's application looks a lot like an instant messaging client built on Adobe AIR. But while most IM clients allow you to do a few things besides chatting (like sharing files, images, and even video), KonoLive takes things to a whole new level.
Users will be able to share Office documents, PDF files, and digital media files with contacts without opening a web browser. Users can also comment on media, and keep track of various versions of a document.
The application is geared more toward business users than casual computer users. Most folks don't really need yet another IM client littering their desktop. But if you're looking for a way to collaborate with a team of people scattered across the globe, or even a typical office space KonoLive looks like an interesting option. The service is expected to launch in private beta on Wednesday.
It's been a while since AOL launched an updated version if its instant messenger for Windows Mobile. The new version is still in beta, but it has some nifty features that make it worth checking out. The first thing you'll notice is that the interface is much more attractive. But it's also more useful. 
Facebook has put out their 
There's a new feature in town for Gmail Chat, but it's actually not all that new. It's been possible for some time now to go into "invisible" mode via AIM and other chat protocols, but Gmail Chat is finally joining the invisible party.
