What if you’re at school, at work or using a public computer and there’s no instant messaging client installed? You could try downloading it but chances are that you’ll bump into quite some ‘guest restrictions’. In the past I solved this by installing the files into the My Documents folder, or right on the desktop, but that’s so unprofessional.

So what else can you do? You could use an online IM client, like imo, eBuddy or meebo. By using one of these three websites, you can chat with your buddies without installing a single thing.

Yoono is a Firefox extension that works like a sidebar and lets you stay updated with friends and websites. You can stay connected with friends on social network websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Piczo, Flickr and Friendfeed. You can also talk to your friends using AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger using the widget. Yoono is a great extension if you want to save time switching between all the social network websites you use and keep less messenger programs running because of the built in instant messenger support. In a way Yoono is like Flock in the way that it keeps you connected with your social networks such as Flickr but I think Flock does a better job at it.

Do you depend on Instant Messaging for communication like I do? Have you ever been caught out there without access to your Instant Messenger?

I know I have been! Your friendly neighborhood Admin has been on location where I did not have administrative access to the computer (imagine that!) nor could I plug in my laptop into their network and do what I needed to do. There have even been times I could not get a cell phone signal or anything on my WWAN card. Some places are actually secure and lock down everything. AOL has an option to forward your IM’s to your cell phone via SMS but without cell service this wouldn’t work either!

I am going through an big instant messaging phase at the moment, partly due to my growing addiction with Twitter. I’ve been getting all my Twitter updates sent to my Google Talk desktop app and this has got me increasingly interested in what other types of information I can get sent to my desktop IM client.

So I went looking for a free web-based tool, preferably a chat bot, that would send pre-selected RSS feeds to an IM program. After trying several that didn’t work as advertised (I won’t name any names), I finally ended up using ZapTXT - although the set-up didn’t exactly go too smoothly at first.

I have made a new friend - well actually I am becoming reacquainted with an old friend. Have you heard of Smarterchild? Smarterchild is an AimBot, an automated assistant that can be added to your instant messenger contacts. It can help you remember things, lookup headlines, find out about local movies, and so on. Now that AIM has been integrated into Gmail this might be a great combination for making SmarterChild into your virtual Personal Assistant.