February 20, 2012
Using a mobile phone while driving is dangerous. We all know that. This danger is the one thing the smartness of our phones doesn’t really solve – no matter how smart they get, they still require more attention than we have to give while driving. The best thing would probably be to turn the thing off every time we drive, but who would seriously do that? So the next best thing is to find ways to limit the distraction the device creates.
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February 17, 2012
For most of us, chatrooms might seem like a relic of the past, but they're still around. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you’ll want to look into the IRC protocol. For those of you who are already familiar with IRC, you can jump past the next section to the list of awesome IRC clients for Windows 7. For those of you who have never heard of IRC, here’s a quick crash course.
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February 6, 2012
Last week, I made my attempt at welcoming newbies to the wonderful world of Internet Relay Chats. This week, we're going to step things up to the next level for those of you who have decided that HydraIRC belongs in your taskbar. If you're anything like me, you feel it's necessary to be in 50 different channels at once. It's time for you to learn how to save yourself a lot of time at every startup.
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February 5, 2012
You may be taking your Skype instant messaging and video calls or your iPhone FaceTime for granted, but way back before the standalone IM client was even an idea, there was one major solution: IRC (Internet Relay Chat). There are a lot of multi-IM clients that support the IRC protocol, but nothing really beats the efficiency and oldschool feel of a standalone chat client.
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February 1, 2012
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?
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January 17, 2012
We're in the age of Skype, which has quickly taken over as the world's most popular and used platform. Our younger readers may not even know what the hell AIM is anymore, actually. 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.
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January 16, 2012
Google Talk is great, but not if you have friends scattered across MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Facebook and every other chat network ever created. You don’t have to run eleven different apps to stay in touch; just use imo.im for Android and get every protocol in one slick app. It integrates nicely with Android and has a simple, clean interface.
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January 3, 2012
Skype is an instant messaging, voice, and video calling client available for various platforms, including Google Android. The Android app has gone through several updates over the past year, which introduced additional features, such as sending files and video calling. For this article I reviewed Skype version 2.6.0.95 on a tablet running Android Honeycomb 3.1.
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December 19, 2011
One of my biggest pet peeves is having to constantly check through text messages while I'm on my desktop or laptop at my desk. I've always thought it was be so much easier to have texts forward to one of my instant messengers, but a concept like that doesn't exactly exist (or at least not to my knowledge). We've shed light before on how you can replace your texting plan with a few free apps, but Textfree from Pinger really goes a step beyond that.
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November 30, 2011
Almost everyone enjoys watching some TV at one time or another. It is a terrific way to take your mind off the world around you and relax. The problem for me is that I always seem to forget when the shows I want to watch are on. I will be sitting around playing some Call of Duty or Skyrim, and the next thing I know, the show I was waiting for has come and gone.
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November 19, 2011
Chat from the command line. Whether you use Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Chat, AIM, Jabber or some combination of the above, CenterIM lets you talk with your buddies in your Linux terminal. We've previously highlighted a few instant messaging programs, but nothing quite like CenterIM.
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September 27, 2011
MSN Messenger has been rising in popularity ever since it stole ICQ's thunder back in the day. I used to be an ICQ fan and never really managed to like anything that came out under the Messenger name. Having said that, I was using it for a couple of years before finding a better solution in Miranda IM.
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August 16, 2011
When it comes down to getting a hold of someone, a simple text or Facebook message will usually do the trick. In fact, we've become so reliant on these means of communication that most of us don't even remember telephone numbers anymore. We still won't need to, because Facebook just released Messenger, a new mobile app that simplifies how messaging works.
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July 20, 2011
One of the most popular methods of direct mobile communication is SMS. It's short, cheaper than a direct phone call, non-intrusive, and most importantly, multi-platform. To overcome the text-only limitation of SMS, MMS also appears. But both services have one main disadvantage.
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May 10, 2011
In 2007 Google enabled AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) users to log in via the Google Talk "Chat" area in the Gmail sidebar, bringing the two services closer together. This made it easier to stay in touch with AIM buddies, but still didn't allow for direct communication with Google Talk users. Not for long however, as the two are about to become inter-operable.
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