It’s time for you to learn how to save yourself a lot of time at every startup and automate the process of joining your favorite IRC servers and channels. This is, by the way, another reason why HydraIRC is the superior client to those of you who are new to the chat universe. Creating “scripts” is incredibly simple and intuitive.

Let’s start off by going into the Options menu and clicking Prefs…. A window of preferences should then pop up for you.

On the left, click Scripts. At this point, you should see a single option of “SomeNetwork_OnLoggedIn“.

In my screenshot, you’ll see many more because I’ve set up autojoins on several servers. Nonetheless, this is an example script profile that HydraIRC has created for you. Using it alone, some users can gauge how to set up their scripts. You can learn a little more about command/script profiles on the official website, but let me do some basic explaining.

HydraIRC has three built-in profile name suffixes that trigger the program to automatically execute a script. These three are as follows:

• OnStartUp, which will execute the script immediately when the application is launched.
• OnLoggedIn, which will execute the script when you have joined a particular server.
• OnJoin, which will execute the script when you join a particular channel.

By creating profiles with the names “OnStartUp”, “{SERVER}_OnLoggedIn”, or “~{SERVER}_{CHANNEL}_OnJoin”, you are authorizing HydraIRC to automatically execute the scripts during those conditions. If we wanted a script to automatically execute when we join the EFNet server, we’d name the profile “EFNet_OnLoggedIn“. If we wanted to execute the script only when we join the #chat channel on EFNet, we’d name it “~EFNet_#chat_OnJoin“.

Let’s go over an example. We’ll use GameSurge, as we did in my first post. By default, it is included with HydraIRC. On the server list, it is given the exact name “GameSurge” (which will need to be exact, case sensitive, in the profile name).

On Gamesurge, we’d like to automatically join #sourcemod, #gamesurge, and #linux when we connect. So we’ve done the hard part. Now here’s our script, “GameSurge_OnLoggedIn”:

/quietjoin sourcemode,gamesurge,linux

It’s very simple. The “/quietjoin” command is ideal when you’re joining multiple channels at once as it softens each join. Afterwards, the channel names (pound signs are not required) delimited by commas.

Now what if you want to automatically join GameSurge every time you launch HydraIRC? That’s simple also. Your script profile would be “OnStartUp”:

/server irc.gamesurge.net

That’s it. At this point, when you start HydraIRC you’d now automatically connect to the GameSurge server and automatically join those three channels. Do you want to connect to multiple servers on startup? Just add a new line with the following (with FreeNode in this example):

/newserver irc.freenode.net

Every power IRC uses user scripts. Automation is one of my favorite things in the world, and you’ll find that automating certain parts of your chatting experience will allow you to do what you came to do – enjoy it. If I’ve still been unable to convince you that HydraIRC is the way to go, check out a few interesting scripts for mIRC.

Holler at me in the comments if you’re having trouble or want to share any more useful scripts for the IRC platform.

I’m not even going to pretend. I was 5 or 6 years old back in 1995 so this is well before my time, too. In the age of social networking and Internet 2.0, web-based chat rooms are practically dead. They’re all but done with; on the endangered list. Still, IRC is the most popular server/client chat protocol in the world. Maybe the rooms aren’t as active as they were 10+ years ago, but we’ve still got a pulse!

Some boredom and curiosity mixed well together and I’ve rediscovered IRC just recently. Now, I’d like to show you how to use my favorite IRC client, HydraIRC. There are a lot of multi-IM clients (like Trillian) that support the IRC protocol, but nothing really beats the efficiency and oldschool feel of a standalone chat client. You’ve probably heard of mIRC, the most popular IRC client, but here’s a few reasons why I love Hydra:

• It is portable. Download the ZIP and extract it to wherever you like. Put it in your Dropbox or on a flash drive. Portable applications beat out self-installing packages every day of the week.
• It is lightweight. mIRC is a little bulky for me.
• It is free. Everyone loves things that are free.
• It supports everything that you need in an IRC client: multiple servers, DCC, event logs, channel monitoring, an extremely flexible GUI, and more.

You can check out some more, official screenshots at the official HydraIRC website.

Anyway, rusty IRC legend or complete newbie, let’s get you started. Get HydraIRC downloaded. Next step is to figure out where you want to chat and what about, right? You want to go into the File menu, then New Server. Hydra comes preloaded with loads of the most popular IRC servers.

Now it’s on you to pick the network (and associated server) that you want. You can either query up Google and learn a bit about each, or experience can guide you. FreeNode has tons of channels for coding, tech support, general hacking, networking, and things of that nature. EFNet is your oldschool “general” server. QuakeNet and GameSurge are for gamers, and so on.
For this example, let’s go ahead and go on GameSurge. Double click GameSurge, click the IRC server that expands beneath it, and then click OK to connect.

Every server consists of many channels (or rooms). Upon connecting, the Channel List window will pop up. If it doesn’t, you can click into the Channel menu and then Channel List. Click Populate List and after a second, you’ll have a list of every channel on the server. Click the Users header once and you’ll have sorted the channels by the most users. Scroll through, see if there are any you may be interested in, and then click Join.

This is how you join an IRC server and a channel (the easy way). There are hundreds and hundreds of servers out there and thousands of channels. There’s probably an active channel for just about any subject that comes to mind. It’s good to have it sitting in your taskbar for idle moments in between tasks.

If you need any help or want to dive deeper into the subject, let’s chat in the comments. If you really like IRC chatting, consider setting up your own IRC channel and read our post on that.

Unfortunately, there is one difficulty with connecting with so many people across the world – time zones. You may want to be available to interact with your readership or to do business with potential clients, but at some point, you have to sleep.

Enter the chat bot. A chat bot can serve as your front desk digital secretary when you aren’t available to accept IM requests. The intelligence of this digital “secretary” really only comes down to how well you’re able to program the dialogue into your chat bot.

MUO has previously covered ChitterIM, which is essentially a chat bot that accepts IM commands from you in order to interact with Twitter. This is just one example of how a chat bot can automatically perform tasks for your site or your business, but in this article I’m going to show you the basic steps to make your own chat bot for your own site or business.

How to Make a Chat Bot

By far, the best available tool for doing this is IMified. We’ve briefly covered IMified in the directory, and Mark covered how to use the prebuilt IMified bot to use a whole list of premade applications that the folks at IMified already offer.

However, you can also create your own customized chat bot by signing up for a new account, and then clicking on the “Create a New Bot” button on the right menu.

Setting up your own customized chat bot is as simple as creating an ID for your bot, and defining the URL where your bot’s chat code will reside. In my case, I’m storing the PHP code for the bot programming on my own website, so I’ve provided the path to that PHP file.

When you’re done, you’ll receive a long “Bot Key” that you can use when you get more deeply into integrating your bot into various services, such as programming your own Twitter features. However, for now we’re going to focus on creating that basic PHP file where you can program your bot to interact with your users.

To show how this basically works, I’m going to explain how the basic PHP file offered by IMified works. Here’s what the basic interaction code looks like.

<?php
switch ($_REQUEST['step']) {
case 1:
{echo "Hi, I'm the TSW Support bot, do you already know what service you want?";
break;}
case 2:
{echo "You've requested service " . $_REQUEST['value1'] . ", is that correct?";
break;}
case 3:
{echo "Thank you for requesting service " . $_REQUEST['value1'] . "<br><br>You said " . $_REQUEST['value2'] . " that you know.<reset>";
break;}
}
?>

If you step through this sample code you’ll see just how simple it is. The IMified bot lets you take the conversation through several “steps”, and you can force navigation. You can allow the user to type something and continue to the next step by doing nothing and just ending that section with “break;”. If you end your echo with a “”, it’ll reset the bot (and the conversation) back to the start. Your bot will forget everything that was recently said.

IMified also lets you use a “goto” command to go to a specific step in the conversation, and will force the conversation one step back (I’ll show you how this works below).

But first, here’s what the bot conversation will look like. The bot is called “tswdesk”.

Of course, you’re going to want your chat bot to be a little more intelligent (and interesting) than this simple example. However, since you are controlling the conversation using PHP code, just think of the possibilities. Based on the conversation, you could perform different services for your readers or your clients. Send out an email, log “feedback” test to a file, or provide the user with requested information. The possibilities are really unlimited.

Here’s a sample PHP bot code where you can provide the visitor with the option to select from a menu of “services” that your bot offers.

<?php
switch ($_REQUEST['step']) {
case 1:
{echo "Hi, I'm the TSW Support bot, do you already know what service you want?";
break;}
case 2:
{
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "yes") {
    echo "Cool, go ahead and type your request.";
    break;
} elseif ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "no") {
    echo "Here are our service commands:<br><br>1-Subscribe to newsletter<br>2-Request to talk to editor<br>3-Submit Feedback<br>4-Subscribe to RSS Feed<br>5-Request a phone call<br><br>Please type your request:";
    break;
} else {
    echo "I don't understand your answer, try again. <error>";
    break;
}
}
case 3:
{
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "1") {echo "Thank you. I've subscribed you to our newsletter using your IM email account. Have a nice day.<reset>";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "2") {echo "Thank you. I've let our editor know that you would like to speak with him. Have a nice day.<reset>";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "3") {echo "Thank you. Please type your feedback now.";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "4") {echo "Thank you. Add our RSS url to your Reader to subscribe: http://www.topsecretwriters.com/rss. Have a nice day.<reset>";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "5") {echo "Thank you. You've requested a phone call. Please type your phone number.";}  
 
break;
 
}
 
case 4:
{
   echo "Thank you. Your information has been submitted. Have a nice day.<reset>";
   break; 
}
}
?>

Now that there’s a bit more logic and information in the background code, you can see how much more intelligent the bot will appear to users, as shown in the conversation below.

Now, carrying out some of these tasks may be as simple as writing to a logfile or sending out an email to the editor using PHP, but if you want to have your bot serve you by accepting Twitter commands or issuing alerts to all chat “friends”, it will require using some of the IMified APIs. That’s outside the scope of this article, but we’ll get to those cool features in an upcoming article.

Have you ever used IMified to customize your own bot, or have you used any other similar service? Share your chat bot experiences and insights in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Recently, I started exploring the potential of using bots on my website to interact with my visitors. After accomplishing that task, I thought that it might be worthwhile to explore what other bots still exist out there that might have some useful features. Most people have their chat client always open and sitting off to the side or at the bottom of the screen, so why not put that chat client to use while it’s open?

The Ebb & Flow Of Chatbots

If you’ve ever started using chatbots even just a few years ago, you’ve probably noticed that a vast majority of them have fallen by the wayside. All sorts of bots that used to let you do things like search different search engines, get task reminders or get RSS feeds via IM are now no longer active. These days, it’s pretty difficult to find a service that offers up RSS feeds via IM.

That seems to be the case for Gtalk bots, but not so much Twitter. Kyle wrote about 10 Twitter bots here at MUO back in 2008, and those Twitter bots are mostly all still active. But in my opinion, having access to information in Google Talk is really useful, and thankfully there are still some really good Gtalk bots out there.

ExclaimBot

If you just want to make quick updates to your Twitter profile, then ExclaimBot is the way to go. It’s actually spelled “excla.im“.

What I like about this Bot is its simplicity. You visit the site, provide authorization for it to post to your Twitter account, and you’re done. Just add exclaimbot@appspot.com to your friends list in Google Talk, and everything you send that user will get posted to your Twitter account instantly.

The only drawback is that you won’t be able to automatically shorten URL links, but using some external service like Bitly, that’s not a problem.

Now you don’t have to open a new browser or any desktop client to post a quick Twitter update, just type it up in Gtalk, hit enter and you’re done. Another good service for this, by the way, is ChitterIM. Either service works just as well.

Google Guru

If you’re looking for an all-around useful bot that does a whole list of tasks, you can’t go wrong by adding guru@googlelabs.com to your buddy list. Send the command “weather boston, ma“, and you’ll get the current weather conditions, as well as a quick forecast for that area. Send it “define ironic” and you’ll receive a definition of the word. Type “web Android” and you’ll get a Wikipedia blurb of the term as well as a mobile link to full search engine results.

There’s just a short list of commands available – score, weather, define and translate – plus you can type in math calculations and the guru will solve it for you.

Get RSS Feeds With Push-Bot

After hunting around for hours to find a Gtalk bot that would serve up RSS feeds via IM, I was really excited to discover that Push-Bot is still available. Most of the popular ones written about at sites like Lifehacker and Labnol are no longer active, so I was getting very disappointed before discovering Push-Bot.

Using the service is ridiculously easy. Type /subscribe or /unsubscribe followed by the URL to add or remove a feed from your list. Use /list-subscriptions to see all of the feeds that you’ve subscribed to. Whenever one of your feeds updates, you’ll get a message in Gtalk from Push-Bot with the update and a link. This is my favorite Gtalk bot.

Xpenser For Tracking Business Expenses

At this point in my life, I have to track several areas of expenses. When I’m off to training for my day job, I need to keep track of all costs so that I can fill out an expense report. For my online business, I need to track all expenses for tax purposes. In either case, Xpenser gives me the convenience that I need to record those expenses right from my phone using Gtalk. This is my second favorite Gtalk bot.

First, you’ll need to sign up for an Xpenser account where all of your entries will get logged.

After that, add xpenserbot@gmail.com to your buddy list. All you have to do is send it the expense, the amount, and ending notes. The bot will fill out that record for you on your expense report in your Xpenser account.

You can log in later to see all of the entries you’ve made while you were away from your computer.

This is easily the fastest and most convenient way to log expenses right away before you forget. Firing off a one-line instant message is even easier than most of the mobile apps available today that will do expense tracking for you.

Take Quick Notes With MayaFile

If your memory is anything like mine, then the mayafile Gtalk bot will be a lifesaver for you too. Using it couldn’t be any easier. Just add talk@mayafile.com to your buddy list, and then use the command “store <note>” to store the message you want to remember later.

Then, just type “find” to see all of your notes, or use “find <keyword>” to retrieve a specific note or notes using a keyword search. It’s like having a memory in your Gtalk client.

Have you ever used any of these IM bots? Do you know of any others that work well in Gtalk? Share your thoughts and insights in the comments section below!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Mumble improves on other voice chat applications for gamers and offers quite a few advantages. It’s optimized for low-latency communications, making it perfect for hectic game situations where every second counts. It automatically normalizes people’s voices, so you don’t have to fiddle with volume levels. It has positional audio support for a variety of popular games, so you can hear another player’s voice coming from their character’s location in the game.

The advantages don’t stop there — it automatically reduces noise and optimizes sound quality. It has strong, certificate-based security. If you’re coming from Ventrilo, another popular voice chat application for gamers, you’ll also find that Mumble voice chat has a much more streamlined interface.

Low Latency

Mumble’s low latency is one of its biggest advantages. In my tests, latency seemed pretty similar to a normal phone call. I can’t say the same about my experience with Ventrilo, which often introduces huge delays. Mumble’s audio setup wizard helps you tune latency to the appropriate value for your sound hardware.

If you’re playing an online game, being able to communicate at almost real-time speeds is a big advantage. It can mean the difference between dodging an incoming attack and hearing about it while your character is already bleeding on the floor.

Automatic Volume Normalization

The Mumble server (also known as Murmur) automatically adjusts every user’s volume level for you. If you’ve used Ventrilo, you’ll remember having to adjust every user’s volume level individually. Mumble eliminates that pointless, fiddly busywork.

Mumble’s Automatic Gain Control feature works automatically as long as every user has their microphone volume at a high enough level — the audio setup wizard guides you through that part.

Positional Audio

Mumble voice chat works with any game, but it includes special plugins for some games. If you’re using Mumble with a supported game, you can activate positional audio and get full, 3D sound. You’ll hear your friend’s speech in your left ear if their character is standing to your left in the game. Mumble includes plugins for a variety of popular games, including World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, the Call of Duty series and the Left 4 Dead games. You can find a full list of supported games on the Mumble wiki.

Setup is easy: Ensure the game’s plugin is enabled, activate the “Link to Game and Transmit Position” on the plugins pane and enable the Positional Audio checkbox on the Audio Output settings pane.

Security

Mumble has strong security features. Encryption is one of them — Mumble encrypts all communications between you and the server, so you can have private voice conversations without being eavesdropped on.

Instead of passwords, Mumble uses certificate-based authentication. Mumble recommends you create a trusted certificate, but this isn’t entirely necessary for casual use. You can just select the Automatic Certificate Creation option to have Mumble create a self-signed certificate for you.

Certificates are more secure than passwords — people can’t connect to a server and impersonate you unless they acquire your private certificate, which is stored locally on your computer. Server administrators can assign fine-grained permissions to specific certificates, and you can even use your certificate to reserve a username on a server.

The Interface

Finding and connecting to servers is easy in Mumble. The program itself provides a list of public servers to connect to — of course, you can also connect to a private server if you know its address

Mumble’s interface is much more streamlined and easy-to-use than many other voice chat applications (I’m looking at you, Ventrilo). By default, there’s a box on the left for status messages and text chat, and a channel list on the right. The lip icon to the left of a user’s name turns red when that user starts talking. The layout is completely customizable from Mumble’s configuration window.

Mumble voice chat eliminates those features that no one uses and brings commonly-used features to the fore. It’s easy to record conversations, set comments and avatar images other users can see and perform other common tasks with Mumble.

Mumble has a built-in overlay, so you can see who’s talking even when you’re playing a full-screen game. The overlay is completely configurable; you can position it and adjust its appearance from Mumble’s configuration window.

Conclusion

Mumble’s only real disadvantage is that it’s not as widespread and many gamers are unfamiliar with it. Still, if you can bring your gamer friends around, Mumble is likely a big improvement over what you’re already using.

Let us know what you think in the comments. Have you tried Mumble? Do you still prefer another voice chat app? Or do all your gamer friends just use Ventrilo or TeamSpeak?

AOL seems to recognize that sentiment and they’ve recently and unofficially dropped AIM 1.0.0.3 on us, dubbed “AIM Preview“. It looks like Skype, it chats like Skype, and it weighs like Skype. But it’s AOL Instant Messenger.

As you can see, I haven’t put much use to it as I’m not a very big fan. First thing you’re going to notice is that AIM has been completely redesigned. It looks nothing like it did in versions 5, 6, or 7. It’s nice and fat now, just like Skype. We’ve got a lot going on here.

1. Lifestream (which is your “status updates” of the AIM world) has been stripped away with and, well, replaced with real status updates (the Facebook kind). AIM updates still exist, they’re just a little more useless now.
2. As aforementioned, Facebook has now become integrated with your AIM experience.
3. Your buddy list has been transformed in a way that mingles Facebook buddies, contacts, and recent chats. It’s another overhaul that has AIM looking a lot more like Skype.
4. Along with Facebook, you can chat with Google Talk buddies through AIM. This already existed if you didn’t know about it.
5. Photos and videos are synced inline on the client. Chat histories are now stored remotely (rather than locally), which enables seamless synchronization between devices (at the expense of your security).
6. There’s a news feed, where AIM promoted their Huffington Post. Not much more to say here.
7. One-on-one video chatting and group messaging (more features pulled from Skype) are now with AIM. I guess this is what they decided to do with AV?

Nothing too unique or exciting is going on here. Maybe it was AOL jumping the gun on Microsoft acquiring Skype, maybe it’s AOL trying to salvage their last true-to-the-company web property that is still used daily by thousands of people.

In any event, it’s a breath of fresh air to a near-dead messenger and that’s about it. If you’ve instant messaged at all in the past couple years, this isn’t bringing anything new to the table. I can’t think of any real compliment here, though it seems as if this preview version isn’t as riddled with ads as others. You can get rid of ads in older versions of AIM quite easily, though.

It’s not worth your time, guys. Stick with Skype and let’s consider AIM an afterthought unless you, like me, need a barebones solution to IM-ing (in which case, I again recommend a much older version of AIM). Anyone else suddenly feeling nostalgic and missing those days when AOL was relevant? I can hear the modem dialing up now.

I’m not trying to beat up on poor old AIM. This is only a “preview” release, after all. Again, you can pick it up here: http://preview.aim.com/
Luckily, it doesn’t install over your old version of AIM and will write to a new directory, so there’s really no risk in at least giving it a shot.

It’s out on every platform: desktop, mobile, and web. You can get it on your iPhone or Android. I was really looking for AIM to be the first IM client that picks up the ball and adapts to the mobile world with a new release. I know you can send SMS messages from AIM, but adopting a more “permanent” solution like Textfree’s method would have been cooler.

Let me know if you guys find anything interesting with the new version that I may have skipped out on. I gave it a quick whirl after reading a few reviews and came to a pretty quick decision. Nothing new here!

As you might expect from an app started by one of Google’s first ten employees, imo.im integrates nicely with Android and has a simple, clean interface. It isn’t just another free app that displays ads or pushes you to upgrade, either – it’s ad-free and has no paid, premium version.

Accounts

Launch imo.im and you’ll see three different panes — Contacts, Chats and Accounts. The accounts pane lets you manage your accounts, set status messages and select a buddy icon.

The first thing you’ll want to do is add an account. imo.im supports popular networks like Google Talk, MSN, AIM and Yahoo; social networks like Facebook and Myspace; and even Skype.

You can add multiple accounts and link them together. When you link your accounts, imo.im saves their passwords in an encrypted form on imo.im’s servers. imo.im automatically logs into your other connected accounts whenever you sign into one. This lets you sign into all your accounts with a single password, even if you’re using the imo.im web app.

Contacts

Tap the Contacts icon and you’ll see online contacts from every account you have in imo. You can organize your contacts into groups or use the search box to find them. Just tap a contact’s name to start a conversation.

Long press a contact and you’ll see a screen with more information about that contact. From here, you can set an alias for the contact, which you’ll see instead of the contact’s screen name. For quick access to a contact, you can tap Favorite so they’ll always appear at the top of your contacts list or tap Shortcut to add a shortcut to your home screen. The shortcut will instantly launch a chat with your contact.

The contacts list also includes a few other features – you can tap the menu button to start a group chat or search your chat history (if you have the history feature enabled).

Chats

The chats pane lists your in-progress conversations and  displays a preview of the most recent message. You’ll see a blue chat bubble icon if a conversation has new messages.

The top of the chat screen shows your open chat conversations; you can swipe between them like you’d switch tabs on a desktop chat program.

One of imo.im’s standout features is support for multimedia attachments. Tap the microphone icon to send a voice message – your contact will get a link to an MP3 file (they’ll see a play button if they’re using imo.im.) You can also hit the menu button and tap Attach to add an image or video from your phone’s camera. imo.im can also attach image, video and audio files from your device’s storage.

imo.im provides notifications, so you’ll see new messages arrive even if you’re using another app.

Web App Integration

The imo.im Android app is completely integrated with the the web app available at (surprise) imo.im. You can sign in from any web browser and use the same accounts you’ve set up on imo.im; just sign in with one account and you’ll sign into them all, assuming they’re linked.

The web app and Android app work seamlessly together. Sit down at your computer, start a conversation and continue it on your Android phone – whenever you send a message in one app, you’ll see it instantly appear in the other. Your conversation history is also stored in the imo.im website, so you can access it anywhere, anytime. Don’t worry if you’d rather not store your conversation history online; this feature is optional.

imo.im even has a Chrome extension, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Preferences

imo.im’s preferences screen contains a good number of options. Its notifications are completely customizable — you can disable them entirely if you want. You can also have imo.im alert you with a vibration, LED flash and/or sound when new messages arrive.

Imo.im saves your account passwords by default, but you can disable this behavior in the privacy section. You can also have imo.im automatically start and sign in when your phone turns on, so you’ll always be available to your contacts. This is also where you can control imo’s online chat history feature.

The look and feel section contains a few options that can change the way conversations appear in imo.im. You can disable buddy icons or emoticons and adjust the size of the font imo.im uses in conversations.

Conclusion

imo.im is a standout multi-protocol chat application, both for Android and on the web. It’s probably the best multi-protocol chat app for Android, and it’s completely free. Check out our list of the best Android apps for more Android app goodness.

Tried imo.im? Or do you swear by another chat app? Tell us what you think in the comments.

The post described 3 excellent apps for recording calls, managing history and using a whiteboard in call. But there are lots more things you can do with Skype apps, such as launching multiple accounts, adding spell checks, translating chats and initiating calls with one click.

Some Skype apps require permission through Skype itself. For a full explanation on how to do this, check out Tina’s post. And now, let’s check out some awesome Skype apps!

Multi Skype Launcher

If you’re regularly using more than one Skype account on the same computer, and you’re tired of constantly signing in and signing out of different accounts, Multi Skype Launcher is going to come in mighty handy.

Simply download the app, add all your Skype accounts, and you’re read to go. Whenever you want to launch more than one account, open Multi Skype Launcher, and launch the accounts you wish to use. For each account you add, you can choose to auto login when the computer starts, and whether it starts minimized or not.

Note that if you choose to auto login, you should disable Skype’s native auto login option from Tools –> Options – > General Settings to prevent confusion.

The app works seamlessly, and I was able to use both my Skype accounts at the same time without a hitch.

Ursa Spell Checker

In today’s world, it’s becoming harder and harder to write without those built-in spell checkers we’re so used to. They’re everywhere, and we rely on them to catch embarrassing typos and even more embarrassing spelling mistakes. Skype chat, however, doesn’t have one. Ursa Spell Checker adds this functionality to Skype, complete with suggestions for correct spelling in a context menu.

Ursa Spell Checker works on an individual user basis. You set up hotkeys to enable and disable it, and whenever you want it to work, simply hit the activation hotkey you set up in the preferences. If you’re chatting to several users at the same time, you will have to enable it for each and every one. This is both a down side and an up side, depending on how you look at it.

You can download multiple languages to Ursa and enjoy a spell checker for different languages. I only tried Ursa with English, so let us know in the comments how it fares with other languages.

Clownfish for Skype

If you need more than a simple spell checker, or if Ursa is not what you’re looking for, give Clownfish for Skype a try. This app offers live translation and text-to-speech, on top of a multi-language spell checker.

The app’s context menu is a bit intimidating at first, but once you brave its sheer size, it’s not that complicated to navigate through.

For translations, you can choose between several different dictionaries, and then set them up for the languages you want to use, or simply let Skype auto detect the languages. You can also encrypt messages, set up the spell checker (which you will have to download dictionaries for), set up text to speech and more.

This is a really useful little app that can make your life easier if you often chat in different languages and need to constantly copy and paste into Google Translate. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the app’s interface is a bit hard to swallow at first, but don’t give up, there are some real gems to be found.

Click.to

Click.to is a brilliant time-saver which is not meant for Skype only, but personally, I find that it’s especially useful when used with Skype. What Click.to does is take data from your clipboard and then lets you use this data in other applications. So how does this help us with Skype? Simple. Say someone just gave you a phone number in an e-mail or a chat, or you’ve found a phone number you need to call in a customer service website. Instead of copying, opening Skype, and pasting, you can use a Click.to shortcut.

When you first install Click.to, you can choose which services it will offer to use. I chose only Skype.

Then, when someone give you a phone number anywhere, simply highlight it, copy it to the clipboard and a set of buttons will appear. If you click the Skype button, a call will immediately be initiated. Simple, and very very useful.

You can easily change things like what shortcuts it offers, the icons’ size and location and whether it offers these shortcuts automatically.

Conclusion

If you use Skype a lot, you’re going to enjoy the enhancements these apps provide. But there are many other apps out there that can enhance your Skype experience. Know of some really good ones? Let us know in the comments, so we know what to try next!

Start Screen

The initial start screen is clean and simple. You can access your contacts, recent conversations, you can call phones, and view or edit your own profile. Via the top right corner you can sign out or change your online status (green). Via the options button (red) you can launch the menu, which includes access to your Skype settings (blue). Note that the option menu changes, depending on what part of Skype you are viewing.

The screenshot below highlights the different status options.

Personal Profile

Your personal profile provides an account overview, including Skype credit and status of your Skype number and call forwarding. When you switch to the profile tab, you can change your personal profile information.

Contacts

Per default, contacts will show your online friends. Clicking the respective button in the top left (red), you can switch to viewing all contacts, only Skype contacts, number, favorites, or blocked contacts. The options menu allows you to add contacts, save a number, search your address book, or sort your contacts by name.

Below is an overview of your contact display options.

When clicking on a friend, you will see a list of possible actions, including voice call, video call, send IM, send file, or SMS. You can also view their profile. Via the options menu you can rename the respective contact, add them to your favorites, block, or remove them.

When you open an IM conversation (click Send IM), you will see the most recent messages. You can make Skype load more messages from the history by dragging the conversation to the bottom. When clicking the chat icon in the bottom left (red), you can select whether to send your message through IM or SMS. Note that charges for text messages apply.

You can manage a conversation via the options menu, for example call the contact, add others to the conversation, send a file, or close the chat.

Sending Files

This is the most recently added feature for the Skype Android app. As of version 2.6, you can send files to your contacts. When you click the respective options buttons, a menu will launch from which you can select a source, typically including the gallery, as well as document and file managers installed on your system. Unfortunately, this does not include your Dropbox account, meaning you have to download any files you want to share via Skype.

Video Calling

As of version 2.5, Skype for Android features video calling, although not on all devices. Unfortunately, the Android Market no longer contains a full list of supported devices. If you run Android 2.2+ on a supported device, however, you can enable video calling and control further details in the settings menu.

I recently wrote a detailed article on how to enable and use the Skype video calling feature: How To Make Skype Video Calls On Your Android Honeycomb Tablet. Briefly, video calls must be enabled via the settings menu, video can then be turned on or off during a call, and on Skype 2.3+ you can switch back and forth between front and rear camera.

Calling Phones

Just like its desktop counterpart, you can use the Skype Android app to call phones or send text messages. Personally, I find this feature much more convenient using the mobile app. The book icon with the # sign in the top right corner is your phone book. You can manually add contacts with the options menu, which is shown at the bottom in the screenshot below.

Conclusion

This was Skype for Android in a nutshell. Basically, it offers all essential functions also available in the desktop application, with clean and simple menus as a bonus. Overall, it may actually be a little easier to use, since the touch navigation forced developers to make the app a lot more intuitive. And by the way, you can have Skype delivered directly to your mobile phone via SMS from the Skype website.

How do you like the mobile edition of Skype and does it look much different on an Android phone? What features from the desktop app do you miss or what other features would you like to see? Please share in the comments!

This article will introduce you to three useful apps that allow you to record your audio calls, manage your chat history, and share an online whiteboard with your contacts during a Skype meeting.

What Are Skype Apps?

Skype apps are small applications that plug into your Skype client to enrich it with extra features. The Skype App Directory presently counts 38 apps in ten categories, ranging from business to translators. Most apps are available for Windows, some also plug into the Mac client, and one is designed to work with Google Android and iOS. Unfortunately, Linux users cannot take advantage of Skype apps.

How Do I Install Or Uninstall A Skype App?

Skype apps are installed independent of Skype and you don’t have to close Skype during the process. Once the installation is completed, you need to give the application access to Skype. If you accidentally deny access, you can always go to > Tools > Options > Advanced within Skype, and > Manage other programs’ access to Skype (bottom right).

In Windows, you can remove Skype apps like any other installed software via the Add/Remove Program menu. Skype apps are listed as independent programs. Uninstalling them does not affect your Skype installation.

Callnote

Callnote allows you to record your Skype conversations and automatically forward them to Evernote. This app only records audio of up to eight lines at once. Names of participants as well as duration of the call are saved automatically. You can set it up to start recording when a call starts. Callnote is available for Windows and Mac.

If you do not use Evernote and would prefer to save your recorded calls on your computer, try G-Recorder Basic. This app also offers the option to back up your chat history and export calls and history to your GMail account in chronological order. G-Recorder Basic is available for Windows only.

SkyHistory

SkyHistory is a chat history manager for Skype. The layout reminds a bit of Windows Explorer. You can browse your chat history by user or calendar, search for keywords, and bookmark selected IMs for later reference.

History from conversations that took place before you installed SkyHistory can be imported via the Options menu. However, this only works for history that Skype saved to your computer.

It’s a great app if you often need to browse old conversations, search for information, or refer back to it later.

IDroo

IDroo is an interactive multi-user whiteboard application that allows you to share a drawing board with your Skype contacts. You can draw and write on the whiteboard, add images, and open several different pages. This app is perfect for visually sharing ideas during an online meeting.

You can save the whiteboard pages as IDroo files or export as an image file and you can open saved sessions to share them again. IDroo is available for Windows only. To participate, your contacts must have the app installed.

Conclusion

Skype apps are tools that co-operate with Skype and add useful features. Even though some work across platforms, most are limited to Windows users. Moreover, the selection of official apps is fairly small and most apps have limited features or only offer a trial version. Nevertheless, you can find some very useful add-ons among the few completely free apps.

If you would like to use Skype on the go, check out these articles:

• How To Make Skype Video Calls On Your Android Honeycomb Tablet
• Skype For iPad – Was It Worth Waiting For?

And here are several more Skype related articles you might be interested in:

• Researchers Discover Skype Flaw That Lets Hackers Track You [News]
• How To Run Multiple Skype Accounts With Multi Skype Launcher [Windows]
• How To Record Skype Video Calls For Free With Vodburner

Do you think chats on Facebook or Google+ are serious competition for Skype? What could get you to switch from Skype to another platform?