I absolutely love the popular Mac multi-chat app Adium. Not only does it support a large number of messaging protocols -- including Facebook Chat in the latest version -- it's insanely customizable. In Adium, you can change the look of everything from your contact list to your message style to your dock icon. There's an extensive library of user-created styles at AdiumXtras.com, but they're not all good.

Recently, I went on a bit of a downloading tear, rummaging through the Adium Xtra trash to discover the Adium Xtra treasure. Here, I present my findings: 8 of the slickest, most beautiful add-ons ever to grace a chat client. To check out the full range of Adium Xtras for yourself, go to adiumxtras.com.

Message Style: Cinematic

Cinematic is a smooth, dark style that fits in really well with OS X. It sports Apple's signature "reflection" effect, and uses buddy icons to show who's talking -- no text necessary. I like an uncluttered feeling when I'm chatting, and Cinematic delivers. Match it up with a darker buddy list style and wallpaper for a really put-together desktop.

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:

1. There's a Firefox plug-in that adds the social-network's IM service to a sidebar.
   
2. The social software/service one-stop-shop known as Digsby also added support for Facebook Chat earlier this year.

[via Lifehacker]

Facebook has put out their chat service, Google has Google chat. There's no desktop app for Facebook, but there is one for Google chat.

Confusing, and annoying. It's also confusing and annoying to have to use those services in separate programs or multiple tabs in a web browser.

AIM is probably the most popular IM service known to man and woman, iChat for Mac...these are both desktop experiences.

Enter Gabtastik.

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.

Your co-workers use MSN Messenger, your family is partial to AOL Instant Messenger, and your friends use Google Talk. There are plenty of utilities that let you keep in touch with all of your contacts regardless of the IM platform they're using. But while we love Digsby, Trillian, Pidgin, and Adium most of the time, there are a few features missing from those apps:

• Support for voice and video chats
• The ability to invite friends from different IM networks into a single chat room

And that's where Instan-T comes in. This multi-protocol chat client for Windows supports AOL, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Messengers. It also supports voice and video chat across each network, although we've found that feature to be a bit finnicky. When we tested out a voice chat, we were able to the person speaking on the other end, but she couldn't hear us. We'll chalk that up to a hardware problem.

Probably the most interesting thing about Instan-T is that it lets you set up a chat room that you can invite contacts from any service to participate in. Just click on a contact name and select multi-person chat. They'll receive an invitation with a URL to click on that will open up a Flash-based chat room, which also features voice and video support.

We'll be honest. The Instan-T interface is a little cluttered and confusing when compared with other multi-protocol chat clients. But the application definitely shows promise. If you want to try the service without downloading and installing anything, you Instan-T also has a Meebo-like web based instant messenger. The web client supports Internet Explorer and Firefox, which means you should be able to access the service whether you're using Windows, Linux or OS X.

[via TechnoBuzz]

Facebook is adding new privacy controls today which will give you more control over your interactions with people in your friend lists. For example, you can share photo albums or applications with your professional contacts while hiding away the good stuff for closer friends.

The company also confirmed plans to launch a web-based instant messenger service that will let you communicate with other Facebook members in real-time. TechCrunch has the video you can see above showing how Facebook Chat could work. But the application is still in development and there could be some changes before it's officially launched in a few weeks.

As IM clients go, Facebook Chat doesn't look that impressive. You'll only be able to communicate with other Facebook users, not AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger users. But Jabber support could be added in the future, which would let you access Facebook Chat with third party software like Trillian, Pidgin, or Adium.

AdiumBook is a free application for the Mac that synchronizes your Adium contacts with your Address Book. The features of AdiumBook fall into three basic categories: search, manage, and reporting.

The built-in search functionality allows you to find an Adium contacts in your Address Book, find an Address Book contact in Adium, or search for specific text in both applications.

Adding an Adium contact to the Address Book is as simple as pressing the Add button. If the contact already exists, you can import the Adium data to an Address Book entry without overwriting the original contact information. Changing the picture, name, IM entry, etc...is as easy as dragging and dropping the information on the Address Book entry.

AdiumBook offers a one-click reporting process that gathers a list of contacts with no picture, a list of contacts present in Adium but not in Address Book, and vice versa.

AdiumBook is open source, and made for Mac OS X.

[via Cool OSX Apps]

Adium, the premier freeware multi-protocol Macintosh IM client, has reached version 1.2. Just after releasing a beta version right before Christmas, Adium is no longer a "beta" status product.

Major new features include an improved menubar item, account management features, and many many bugfixes. One feature we took notice of off the bat was in the menubar, when you miss a message, the Adium icon shows how many missed messages you have. Also, you can easily set your availability status for each contact in your contact list. There are far too many improvements and fixes to go in depth for this post. For more info, check out the full changelog.

Adium is ready for your downloading pleasure and, of course, it's free!

[via TUAW]

It used to be that a USB thumb drive was used mainly for transporting files to and from computers. Now, however, more people are using thumb drives to house portable applications. When you sit down at a computer that doesn't have Firefox, for example, and you're simply unwilling to double-click that Internet Explorer icon, just pop in your thumb drive, double-click your portable Firefox application, and surf away--no installation necessary.

Lists of portable applications are as old as the applications themselves, but lists of portable Mac applications are more rare. Over at Web Worker Daily, they have counted up and listed eleven portable applications for your Mac. Favorites on the list include Adium, that ubiquitous multi-protocol chat client, Bean, a lean and mean text editor, and iStumbler, a small app designed to find all wireless signals in your area, including Bluetooth, Airport, and Bonjour.

No longer will we envy those Geek Squaders with their multi-toned VW bugs and their keychain of portable thumb drives. Now we too can carry our USB drives with purpose. But unlike the Geek Squad, we will use our thumb drives for good, not for evil.

[Via Web Worker Daily]

Adium, the multi-protocol, open source, Instant Message client for Mac OS X has today reached version 1.1. Whilst the team behind the project have been releasing regular updates to the client, this particular update is of note due to its much longer development period (according to the Adium blog, version 1.1 has been a year in the making).

So what's new? Firstly there'sa dose of "tastier tabs". Tabs are something Adium has had for a while, however the new tabs, part of the Google Summer of Code project, are indeed far tastier. There's a plethora of other new features too, however one of note is the new ability to import iChat message logs to Adium - Adium has long held its own over iChat's basic transcript handling. In other news, MSN 'nudges' and Yahoo! Buzzes are fully supported too.

Adium is, of course, a free download and supports MSN, AIM, Yahoo!, Jabber / GTalk and more protocols.

Update: Reader Racco notes in the comments that v1.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4.0 Tiger.

Adium is a terrific free instant messaging client for Mac OS X that connects you to AIM, Jabber, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN and more all at once. The application is feature-packed as it is but, like so many other applications these days, users have developed plug-ins to make it even better. The complete list has been conveniently compiled in one place, but here's five cool ones to get you started:

After a year and a half of development Adium 1.0 for Mac was released yesterday.

The instant messaging client for Mac has a variety of new features including iTunes Now Playing Status, privacy management, improved account management, a new default appearance, and a redesigned chat transcript viewer with improved searching, plus tons more and I do mean tons.

I downloaded 1.0 last night and there are literally pages of bug fixes and improvements to this version of Adium (over 600 total) making it a serious upgrade to the last version. Adium 1.0 also supports QQ messaging in addition to the other 13 previously supported messaging systems.

This is a serious upgrade that I know I for one was seriously ready for.