Many of us work with people who aren't in the same area code, or even the same country. YuuGuu is a program designed to keep you connected and make sure you and your coworkers on the same page.

On the surface the program looks like your basic messaging client. Users all have to be registered with YuuGuu (there are plans to allow people who haven't downloaded the program), and you can send messages back in forth just as you would on AIM. YuuGuu takes being together a step further however by allowing you to instantly share what's on your desktop with users on your buddy list. You can also set up online meetings with your coworkers where you can all look at and interact with the same documents or applications at the same time. So you can show a client how a new program you're working on is going, or get a friend to check out some photo editing you're doing in PhotoShop.

If you need help with something you're working on you can give others control of your mouse and keyboard so they can work on your PC from wherever they are as if you were sitting beside each other. You can also use YuuGuu to remotely access your own computer, or any computer you've been given permission to access. Priceless for those late night "How do I send email" phone calls from mom.

YuuGuu is free, and is currently in beta.

Wengo Meeting, currently in private beta, allows you to invite up to four friends or business associates to video chat together for free. The service is completely web based with no software downloads required. Not surprisingly, Wengo Meeting was built by the same people who created the WengoPhone and WengoVisio.

As a Wengo Meeting user you select your meeting time and send email invitations to up to four participants along with an optional personal message. Meetings can be set up anywhere from a minute to over a year in advance. For meeting you plan extremely in advance you can also set up an email reminder to notify you of the conference anywhere between 1 and 24 hours in advance of the chat. The day of the chat everyone will be sent a URL that takes them immediately into the conference with no registration required for your chat participants.

Wengo Meeting is currently in private beta. I applied this morning and was given access within seconds.

Microsoft has released version 6.0 of its chat client Messenger for Mac. This version, like the previous one, requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later. New features include custom emoticons, integration with Yahoo! IM contacts, the ability to display the currently playing iTunes song (a la iChat), and the option to have multiple contact list windows (this may be helpful in decreasing the likelihood of accidentally sending a steamy IM to your boss instead of your significant other). Additionally, if you're using Live Communications Server, you get the added benefits of secure chat, encrypted file transfers. Oh, and did I mention it's a universal binary version? Add one more to the list of apps that will run natively on Intel Macs.

(Thanks, Spluch!)