5 Online Instant Messaging Services to Chat with Friends

David Pierce — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:01:33 +0000

I’ve found over the last few years that I’ve started instant messaging more and more. Since nearly everyone seems to always be at their computers, it’s a convenient way to quickly get in touch with them. Now that IM is included with things like Facebook and Gmail, I’m online even more often.

Most IM clients, or at least most good ones, require a downloaded client in order to work. That’s fine and good, unless we’re on a different computer, or don’t have administrative privileges on our work computers, or just don’t like extra clutter on our hard drive.

If you fall into any of those camps, here are five totally Web-based, totally free online instant messaging services that you might want to check out.

Meebo

Meebo is the most popular of the Web IM choices, and with good reason. This online instant messaging service works with AIM, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, MSN, GTalk, ICQ, Jabber, and even Flixster.

Meebo also offers group chat, a great mobile version (for iPhones and the like), and even access in your Firefox sidebar. There’s support for file-sharing, video chat, and much more – it’s as fully-featured, if not more so, than most desktop IM clients.

My experience with Meebo was that it works best with Facebook chat, and is definitely one of the simplest to use. It’s also incredibly well-funded, which means it’s likely to stick around for a while.

Whether you use it on the site or embed it on your own website, Meebo’s a terrific IM client.

Nimbuzz

Meebo’s not my favorite, though; that prize belongs to Nimbuzz. Nimbuzz is mostly making a name for itself as a client for your cell phone or iPhone (and it’s a great one), but it offers a fabulous Web-based messaging client as well. You can make calls, group chats, send files, and do anything you’d want to do with an IM.

Instead of logging in each time to every one of your networks, you can put them all into an account with Nimbuzz instead. Then, every time you log in, just enter one username and password, and log in to all your IM networks. You can put your buddies into groups, view them by network, or just lump them all into one list.

Though Nimbuzz only has a couple of unique features – like the friend locator, to see where people are – its simplicity of use and gorgeous interface make it my IM application of choice (on every platform – but let’s stick with the Web for now.)

The feature that really sold me, though, was Skype integration – nothing else has it, and Nimbuzz does it very well. It’s a great VOIP client, a great Instant Messenger, and the application to start with in my opinion.

imo.im

imo is a relatively unknown player on the Web IM scene, but is beginning to make some waves, and with good reason. My favorite things about this online instant messenger are within your buddy list, you can star buddies you talk to most, re-name and re-order buddy lists, search through your buddy list, and even upload pictures of your buddies to the imo interface.

There’s support for voice and video chat (fingers crossed for Skype soon), some great keyboard shortcuts, and a simple-to-use interface.

If their project list is any indication, there’s some spectacular stuff coming soon from this already-great client, so keep this one bookmarked.

KoolIM

KoolIM is the niche-IMr’s tool of choice. In addition to the standards (Yahoo, MSN, AIM, GTalk), it supports ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, Xfire, Jabber, and more. If you’re a user of a small network, KoolIM may be your best – or only – choice.

KoolIM offers two options for chat – an embedded client, available right from within the browser window, or a popup client, which looks and feels a bit more like a desktop application, acting outside of your browser (but still as a browser window).

You can log in to one account at a time, or all of them by creating a KoolIM account. KoolIM also claims fame as functioning behind a firewall, which some other applications can have trouble with.

KoolIM’s simple, not particularly feature-rich, but is uniquely network-friendly among IM clients.

eBuddy

eBuddy supports a huge number of IM services – MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, ICQ, MySpace, and promises Facebook is coming soon.

When you load eBuddy, it opens a new window for you to chat in. Your chats and contacts are tabbed, and there’s even a chat history for your recent conversations.

eBuddy offers a bunch of client versions, including great ones for your cell phone. Much like Meebo, you can also embed eBuddy directly into your own website. eBuddy’s feature list really explodes when you create a free “eBuddy ID,” which gives you tons of fun and useful features – faster login, more emoticons, saved settings, and access to other premium features.

All of these applications and others do the basics well – they send and receive messages, notify you of new ones, and generally remove the need for a desktop application. If all you want to do is chat, any of these five will do – pick the prettiest one. Each one though, has a few unique features that make it the winner for specific people.

Try one or a few of these – which web-based client do you use for messaging?

Photo Credits: gonzalo_ar

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AIM Express lets you use IM without installing a client

Karl L. Gechlik — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:06:39 +0000

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!

Security is one thing but limiting functionality is another. So there are ways around the limitations if you can freely browse the web. Let’s get you back to chatting cybering dumb quick.

I use AIM Express from AOL. If a computer has internet access, chances are you can run one of these lightweight in browser clients. To add some icing to the cake they have just released their newest beta version of AIM Express.

It runs on Adobe’s Flash now and is a lot smoother than previous versions. The client is compatible with Windows and Mac (I’m sure a resourceful young go-getter like yourself could MAKE it work on Linux!) Make sure your system meets these requirements. If it does not, don’t fret we have another option for you. Keep on reading!

System Requirements

Windows

Windows 2000/NT/XP/Vista
Flash player 9
Javascript enabled browser
Recommended browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0, Firefox 1.5 and higher, Safari 3.0

Mac OS X

Flash player 9
Javascript enabled browser
Recommended browsers: Firefox 1.5 and higher, Safari 3.0

On a regular basis I use Digsby for my cross platform IM’ing needs but when I can’t use Digsby I run this flash based chat. It is really easy to use and as always it is free. All you need to do is browse on over to here and launch it. As long as you have flash installed on the machine you are good to go!

But just like I stated above there are ways to get this to work on a machine without Flash. In this situation you need an older version of AIM Express. The previous version is still available and will run on older setups or more locked down environments.

As you can see there are no system requirements and the Browser requirements are pretty easy to match on most systems.

Browser Requirements

To use the AIM Express service, be sure that your computer is running one of the following Web browsers:

Internet Explorer 5.5 or later
Firefox 1.0 and later
Mozilla 1.4 or later
Netscape 7.1 and later

Note: Web browsers must allow pop-ups from AIM.com in order for AIM Express to run properly.

If your system does not meet the requirements, you can still access an older version of AIM Express.

(By): Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at askTheAdmin.com today.