Most people would associate an Instant Messaging (IM) program with chatting idly to friends all day long but in actual fact a lot of companies have been developing chat bots which enable you to use your IM program to make you more productive. The best one (in my opinion) is Imified. I use it on a daily basis and I can’t say enough good things about it. I’d like to show you today some of the things it can do to help you.
Imified basically allows you to connect with online services using your chat program. Whether you are a user of Google Talk, AIM, Windows Live or Jabber, information from these online services is securely passed back and forth, allowing you to do everything from your desktop. This can be anything from updating your Twitter stream to checking an IP address. One thing is for certain. Imified is going to be the most valuable friend on your IM contact list.
So the first step to setting up Imified is to get the bot onto your contact list. This is extremely simple. All you have to do is pick your chat service, take the associated email address and add it to your contact list :
MSN (Windows Live Messenger) : imified@imified.com
Google Talk: imified@imified.com
Jabber: imified@imified.com
Once it is on your contact list, send the Imified bot a message to wake it up. It should then be approved and brought online either right away or after a short period.
The first thing you will get is an activation link to the Imified website and a very small menu, one of which will say “My Account”. Ignore that for the moment. First, click on the activation link as this will activate your account and get you into the Imified website.
Once you are in, you will see 3 pages of widgets which you can add to your IM client :
All you need to do is just go through the lists, choose the ones you want and add them to your IM client.
How do you add them? It’s very easy. See those green plus signs in the top left hand corner of each widget? Just click on the green plus sign for the widget you want to install. That opens it up. You’ll be asked to give it a preferred name and depending on the app, you may also be asked for a username and password. Then click “enter” and suddenly your IM program will update!
It’s a bit hard to explain here. It’s one of those things where it’s easier if you just do it.
OK now this is basically what my Imified menu looks like on Google Talk. I’m sure I’ll add more later but right now, I’ve confined myself to these five apps.
If at any time I want to access my Imified account, all I have to do is hit “6″ and Imified will create an unique URL for me to get into the website.
Let’s take a look at some of the things on my menu to demonstrate how useful Imified is :
By using certain commands, you can find out all kinds of information about a domain.
We all know about Delicious, the bookmarking site. Well, using Imified, you can send bookmarks straight to Delicious. You can even add descriptions and tags. There’s a slight delay before the bookmark gets added to your profile though so don’t expect an instantaneous addition. But it DOES work!
I’ll lump these two together since Twitter and Jaiku are essentially both microblogging services and do the same thing.
No delay with this one! My Twitter feed is updated instantly!
There are LOTS of widgets you can add to your Imified bot which can help you do things faster. Which ones do you like?
(By) Mark O'Neill is a freelance blogger and professional writer. He is also the managing and publishing editor of MakeUseOf. Check out his personal blog at Better Than Therapy
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Filed Under: Cool Websites
Tags: bots, chat, chat bot, delicious, GTalk, IM, msn, productivity, Twitter
Nice article, but you forgot the most powerful feature of IMified. The ability to create your own bots using their Application Hosting system. You are not restricted to using the widgets provided, with a little programming skill you can create a bot perform whatever tasks you want.
This looks really neat, but it looks like they’re planning to go off of beta and into a payed system
The bot that I talked about shows no sign of becoming a paid deal. It’s been around for years for free.
What bot? Thanks.
I believe that the standard bot that the article is about will remain free as a personal service. The application hosting solution (write your own bot) will probably be paid, as it’s intended for use by people running services like twitter.
But don’t quote me on that.
Very interesting. I’m always on the hunt to increase productivity. I’ll give this a go give this a try this afternoon. Thanks again!
I must be doing Soooooomething wrong. I registered and logged successfully but don’ see ANY widgets. And when try to browse the apps directory I get “The App Directory is coming soon!”.
Sounds to me like you are in the wrong place. The app directory is for the app hosting side of things not the personal bot side. You are looking for the old bot site.
Khendar - I must still be missing something. I went to that URL. All that did was direct me back over previously covered pages.
I have MSN Messenger setup. And like Nathan, if I try to send a message to it, I instantly get undeliverable. The only thing I AM able to find is the developer’s side of everything.
Sounds like it could be a useful tool but, as of yet, nothing an enduser would want.
I simply could not get this to work. I added it to my Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger list exactly as it said in the article. The imified@imified.com contact went online as expected but sending it a message was useless. I just kept getting a message saying it could not be delivered. I went to the web page Khendar posted above but there’s no way to get it working from there. I don’t understand it but so far this has been a big waste of time, it doesn’t do a thing but sit in my contact list mocking me.
me too - just can’t get it to work - glad to see it wasn’t just me.
Found this on their forum from Dave Hoff on 17 Sept 08
Hey everyone, sorry, we’re aware that there is a problem when adding
an MSN account to your bot. For some (most) of you the msn screen name
never comes online even though the credentials are correct. We’re
working on a fix and will post here when we’ve got it.