The Only Gaim In Town

I admit it. I'm a closet instant messenger (IM).

Because I have friends on ICQ, Yahoo, and AOL, I use an IM client that can watch all of these IM services at the same time.

Up until tonight I was using one called Trillian from Cerulean Studios, but a recent change in Yahoo's protocol caused many IM clients to break. Although Cerulean was quick to find the fix, they were only making it available to their paying customers of the Pro version. I do understand, but I hope they will now understand why I am playing a different Gaim.

While doing my required Slashdot reading, I ran across an IM client that is free and provides the same basic service as Trillian. I will be the first to admit that it is not as pretty, but it works virtually the same, and quite frankly, the authors of Trillian seem to have become more greedy and snobbish.

I am also researching Jabber, which is a free IM server application, and will reduce the dependency on using services like AOL, ICQ, and Yahoo altogether. Of course, as long as I have friends on the other services, there will always be the need to at least be able to monitor these services as well.

If you'd like the ability to monitor multiple IM accounts with the same program, check out Gaim. So far, I'm pretty happy with the results.

IM me sometime...

ICQ # 2562899
AIM "KnightlyDuty"
Yahoo "FMV_Stardragon"