jabber 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

Tracking Tiger

I’d like to start off by saying that Tiger has a lot of exciting new features, and represents a significant milestone in the development of OS X. With no disrespect to the year and a half Apple’s programmers have put in, we’re going to do our best to match some of the Tiger’s best features – for free, or close.

mu Tracking TigerQuicksilver

One huge bonus in each of this week’s picks is the excellent community support that make these applications so powerful. Quicksilver, like Spotlight helps you find things on your Mac faster. Through an extensive plugin library, Quicksilver finds select files and folders on your system, and provides you quick access to their contents.

quicksilver Tracking Tiger

You have to try Quicksilver to fully appreciate its convenience. The website hosts a bunch of plugins which give you commands and search data from your favorite applications. The next Tiger-only version will feature many new features, but the latest beta will be preserved for Panther users.

mu Tracking TigerAdium

Tiger will ship with a new enhanced version of iChat. This new version will support video conferencing. Adium does not support this. The new iChat is now Jabber-based, and Adium is probably the best Jabber client for OS X.

adium Tracking Tiger

Again, part of what makes this such a great application is the community supporting it. Adium is much more than a multi-protocol chat client. On Adium’s site users share sound sets, window themes and scripts. The forum is full of users too. Did I mention a strong community?

mu Tracking TigerOnMyCommand

Now, this is not quite Automator, but this custom contextual menu system could save you all kinds of time on repetitive tasks. In fact with the plethora of commands available from the website, you can create contextual menu items to do everything from Force Eject to Track a UPS Package. This great utility should save you at least as much time as you will waste playing with it (and trust me, that’s a lot of time).

mu Tracking TigerKonfabulator

Okay, this one is neither a surprise, nor is it free. However, I’m willing to make an exception here if you’ll indulge me. Konfabulator is a konfabulous way to both make your desktop more useful and attractive and is hauntingly similar to Tiger’s Dashboard. There are more user-contributed widgets than you can shake a stick at, and the community support is great. If all you want from Tiger is lick-able widgets, save yourself some money and go with Konfabulator.

There you are. It’s not quite Tiger, but you can’t argue with the price.

Brian

mu Tracking TigerDownloads provided by MacUpdate

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