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]

Yahoo! has launched a public beta of Yahoo! Messenger 9. The update includes a bunch of boring but important updates like localized versions for more countries including Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. But the big news is that you can embed videos, images, and maps in a chat window.

If you copy and paste a YouTube URL into a message, a video window will pop up. You can also add a Flickr slideshow or drag and drop images from your desktop.

The new IM client also has a redesigned contact list. When you hover over a friend, options pop up for sending an IM message, SMS text message, or starting a voice call. You can also customize the look with new skins, and you can add emoticons to your status message.

Yahoo! Messenger 9 beta is available for Windows XP and Vista. There are other versions available for Mac, Linux/Unix, mobile, or web chat.

[via Yahoo! Yodel Anecdotal]

Imo.Im is a web based instant messaging service, from former Google employees, that lets you IM your friends from various IM clients, such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger. This aggregator service is similar to Meebo and e-buddy.

Now that's all well and good, but they just added video chat to really get the party going. Now you can video chat with your friends using a web cam with just one click via an invite button. You can also do a three way chat with the first two chatters each opening a separate window with the third party.

Another feature sure to be the ultimate party starter, is Imo's group chat, which lets you chat across multiple IM clients, although this feature is still under development.

Imo.Im was launched in April and its creators are fomer employees of Google. It has about 70,000 users.