client

Apr 27 2009

Universal Chat Clients

By: Brian Burnham

At last it’s Friday, and time for another featured download of the week.

The Joy of Chat

Back in the early days of the net when chat was born, many of us found ourselves on IRC (internet relay chat). Today the world’s chatters are broken up over several major chat networks.

The problem of interpolarity

Fortunately, there is a solution without having to simultaneously run multiple chat clients. Enter the universal chat clients:

Fire

Fire is perhaps the oldest chat client out there for OS X. It came out in the beta days. Since then it has steadily improved to a veritable bonfire of features. These include support for PGP security, limited file transfer and undocumented “smileys”.

Features and frequent updates make this my at-home chat choice. Fire, like most universal clients, supports ICQ, Yahoo, AIM and MSN

Proteus

Proteus is a newer OS X client, very similar to Fire. Though initial releases lacked Fire’s stability, current releases nearly match Fire in features and stability.

Proteus has two extra features that set it apart from Fire. First, Proteus has a corresponding menu bar icon (and you know how I love those) and its configurable windows make your chatting more subtle. This is useful if you chat at work and don’t want others to notice. Proteus supports the same chat networks as Fire.

Jabbernaut

So, “what do I do,” you ask, “if I’m still running OS 9?” Well there is hope. While I have not found a true universal chat client for the “classic” OS, there is another solution. While the above clients do the translating themselves, the Jabber network is composed of servers that do the “interpolation” of the different chat networks, similar to the way IRC works. Thus all you need is a Jabber client, like Jabbernaut. The down side? The Jabber networks can be unstable, as it is constantly being updated. However it is a solution worth investigating.

Also, if you get hooked on Jabber and upgrade to X you’ll be able to use Fore or Proteus to access your Jabber account.

So, until next week I’ll expect to see you on AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo…

Brian

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Apr 27 2009

Something to Chat About

Well, all over Mac-dom Apple enthusiasts will be gathering at their local Apple Store tonight for the proud unveiling of Apple’s new Jaguar.

One of Jaguar’s nifty new features is iChat, a nicely integrated AIM client. Well, what of the other chat clients? The last few weeks have seem some major updates…

Yahoo!

Dear to all of our hearts, many feared Yahoo messenger would never make it to Mac OS X. But the days of petition are over and Yahoo Messenger is out in all its Aqua glory. Pretty much identical to it’s older counterparts, the latest update provides file transfer, and introduces webcam support, an OS X first.

ICQ

Another chat system that most of the die-hard chatters are familiar with, ICQ had just made its OS X alpha debut (although people have been using 3rd party universal clients since Fire came out for OS X). With a par feature set including SMS message sending and POP email monitoring, this update puts ICQ back in an enviable position. Of course, now that ICQ has been merged with AIM you could also use…


AIM

As my pick for best utility, The recently updated version of AOL’s Instant Messenger is packed with features including POP email alerts, file transfers and direct and community chat. The most useful feature has to be the ability to share a selected folder with your “buddys”. Do be careful, this is a stupendous security risk if mishandled, but it can also be a great file sharing method with Macs not on your network.

MSN

While AIM is my pick for utility, MSN has to be my pick for style. MSN is the most Aqua-ish of the pack, and comes with a decent feature set. MSN boasts the ability to send files unlimited in size to Mac and PC users. It also sports the ability to send messages to mobile devices and monitor your Hotmail account.

Whatever chat network you chose to use, there’s a nice new OS X client out there for you. So now all you need is something to chat about.

Brian

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Apr 27 2009

The Freeware in Rick’s iBook

As Brian celebrates Thanksgiving with his family, the job of bringing you all
your weekly dose of free software tips falls on me. I agreed to this job without
first asking myself, “Do you know what you’re doing?” If I had asked
that question I would have realized that the answer was “No.” So rather
than totally cop out, I’m going to offer you a list of the freeware I carry
with me in my iBook as I go about my day.

Adium
I can’t believe we have never covered this program here yet! This is the
AOL IM client for Mac OS X — customization up the wazoo. If you are familiar
with America Online’s Instant Messager, then you pretty much know the basics
of Adium: set up your account, set up a buddy list, go online and chat away.
The difference with using Adium is it has none of the unwanted banners, news
tickers and stock information that comes with AOL IM and it has not of the cutsie
buddy pictures and candy coated dialog balloons that come with iChat. And, if
you so desire, all your chats and your buddy list can all be held in one tabbed
window. Clean and neat.

There seems to be an additional
version of Adium floating around at a different location so I’ll include
that too.

adium The Freeware in Ricks iBook

MacStumbler
This is the Mac equivalent of NetStumbler. It allows an 802.11b (aka: Wi-Fi,
aka: Airport) enabled Mac to scan for signals in the area. It shows SSID, MAC
address, channel, signal strength, the vendor of the access point and whether
WEP has been enabled. If you’ve got a Wi-Fi card in your portable Mac, load
this utility, hop in the car and see how many wireless access points you can
find in your neighborhood. It even announces newly discovered servers using
the Mac’s speech synthesizer so you can keep you eyes on the road while you’re
wardriving.

backlightstumbler The Freeware in Ricks iBook

BackLight
Okay this one is not all that productive…in fact, it’s counterproductive.
What Backlight does is displays whatever Screen Effect you specify as your Desktop
picture — LIVE. As you might imagine this dominates your processor quite
a bit and, even at the lowest priority setting, will render most Macs pretty
useless for anything other than watching BackLight.

That’s it for this week. Brian will be back with more free Mac software next
week. If you have any suggestions for freeware we should feature here that we
haven’t covered already, send
Brian a message about it.

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