Tag: INSTANTMESSAGING

Bots -- like the kind which automate IRC rooms and Google Wave -- are a good thing to know about. There are plenty of useful bots worth knowing about, too, including the Google Talk Guru. Just add guru@googlelabs.com to your GTalk buddies, and you can start firing off questions. Lifehacker suggests that the same types of queries supported by Google SMS will work, though we didn't have any luck ...

We've all thought it, but never dared think it could be true: what if Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL actively monitor our instant messenger chats? What if mentions of 'bomb' and 'underage' are tracked and sent to law enforcement agencies? What if chat providers don't agree with the things we say, or the links we share, and filter or censor the content of our transmitted messages? Well, it looks like ...

Meebo has pumped up its iOS app with a handful of new features which take it beyond multi-network instant messaging. Initial Twitter support has been added, as has the ability for users to check-in to websites they're browsing. You can enter a site manually, or simply scan a QR code. There's also a new real-time feed tab which displays updates from your Facebook, Twitter, and Meebo streams. The ...

Facebook has snatched up Beluga, one of the most popular group messaging services around. We recently mentioned Beluga in our round-up of cross-platform BlackBerry messenger alternatives, and it's been growing steadily in popularity ever since it launched just a few short months ago. In its official announcement, Facebook says it is "excited that the [Beluga] team will continue their vision ...

For a while now, people have questioned whether multi-network chat app Trillian was worth its pricetag. With the company's latest update, there's a better chance users will say "yes." The big addition is that chats in Trillian are now shared in realtime across all your devices -- similar to how Google Talk and Skype have handled chats for some time. The difference, of course, is that Trillian ...

Now that Skype has recovered from the serious worldwide outage on December 22nd, CIO Lars Rabbe has blogged about what went wrong behind the scenes. The problem began when a group servers that handle Skype's offline instant messaging became overloaded, in turn causing some Skype clients to receive delayed responses and crash. The bug only affected users of version 5.0.0.152 on Windows -- ...

Earlier this week, Trillian, one of the oldest third-party IM client developers, released its Android app. I've always found Trillian a bit gimicky -- kind of like a 'Super Mega' Windows Live Messenger, with more bells and whistles than I really need, and a bloated, hard-to-navigate UI as a result. Trillian for Android, I'm sad to say, is no better. Ultimately, it's functional but it feels like ...

Kik, the hot new messaging app that racked up a million users in a couple of weeks and then got called out for covertly harvesting users' contacts, has now been completely banned from RIM's BlackBerry App World. RIM announced it was booting Kik over "breached contractual obligations," and that it has terminated all agreements with Kik and stopped supporting the service. As our sister site ...

Yahoo! Messenger remains one of the most popular desktop IM clients around, and its users are now able to get a taste of what's coming in version 11. Like its biggest competition -- Windows Live Messenger -- Y! Messenger 11 is about creating a more current, social messaging app. One of the biggest additions is Facebook chat support -- which works nicely, though former Squadder Brad Linder ...

It's more like instant messaging than email -- more like a conversation than a threaded email conversation. Yes, every communication that goes through the Facebook messaging platform will create a conversation history. Much like Google Wave, actually. The idea is that you will push every digital communication through Facebook, and thus everything can be logged -- every message has a context. ...

Extolling the virtues of what messaging should be -- seamless, instant, personal and simple -- Mark Zuckerberg has just launched what sounds just like a socially-aware version of the now-defunct Google Wave. It is not email -- though you will get a username@facebook.com email address -- but it handles email. It's a messaging platform that interweaves all of your incoming messages, be they ...

Must-have smartphone apps are few and far between. In fact, it's hard to name more than two apps that I use on a daily basis: Angry Birds is the first, of course, and BeejiveIM is the second. I reviewed BeejiveIM for Android last month and came away with the conclusion that it's almost faultless. The interface is smooth, and you can customize colors and backgrounds to your heart's content. ...

Adium isn't the only instant messaging app powered by libpurple which has seen a healthy spate of updates recently. Pidgin -- the cross-platform multi-network massaging app -- has been updated twice in the past fortnight, squashing numerous bugs and tweaking its interface. Among the lengthy changelogs for Pidgin 2.7.4 and 2.7.5 you'll find support from Chrome and Chromium on non-Windows ...

After a rather epic and pregnant pause, the developers of Adium have finally squeezed out the next major version release of the best open-source Mac chat client in town: Adium 1.4. The main feature additions are Twitter and IRC support, but the contact list has also been overhauled to support contacts in multiple groups and instant searching. There's also a new version of libpurple under the ...

Microsoft Messenger for Mac, Microsoft's instant messaging application for Apple-made computers has hit version 8, finished its beta testing, and is now ready to download and use. Microsoft Messenger for Mac 8 will be included in the upcoming Office for Mac 2011 suite as well. Messenger for Mac has all the features you'd expect -- it lets you instant message, audio and video call your friends ...