First, we need to install the microblog-purple plugin. While you can simply download, install and start using the plugin, you need to do some additional work to ensure that any updates to the plugin are delivered to you automatically.

Open System > Administration > Software Sources. Navigate to the Third Party Software Tab and add the following to your software sources:

• deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
• deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Next, we need to import the key for the software source that we added. To do so, open up a Terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0cf459b8df37ed8b

Once this is done you can install the plugin using the following command:

sudo apt-get install pidgin-microblog

Now just add a new account to Pidgin, choose Twitter from the protocol drop down menu, provide your username and password and you are all set to start tweeting from within Pidgin!

Note that this plugin supports Twitter and Identica. While the instructions above is the preferred method to install any third party software in Ubuntu, if you run into any problems you can simply download the deb package (or a binary package for you preferred distribution) and install it like any other software.

Windows users can also download the exe version of the plugin and install it alongside Pidgin.

How do you tweet from your Linux desktop? Do you use Gwibber? Adobe AIR based applications? Or would you prefer to stay with one software and manage everything from within Pidgin? Let us know in the comments.

Well, we can’t exactly condone corporate espionage (We’ve had enough of that, thank you very much!). However if you are, as an example, a newly-elected U.S. President, named… I don’t know… Barack (I just pulled that out of nowhere, honest!), with secrets to keep just between you and a friend or sweetie (let’s call her…um…Michelle) over IM, you’re likely going to want some form of encryption between the two of you.

There are several ways to secure instant messaging, but here are the two absolute easiest ways. The first is web-based, because we just adore web-apps.

You will likely have heard by now of Meebo, the instant-messaging app that only requires your browser. It’s handy for when you’re on, say, your brother’s computer (as I am right now), and you need to get at your contact list. While your IM passwords are always sent through encrypted, secure means, accessing the site via the secure HTTPS protocol like so encrypts your messages as well, allowing for tighter security.

As an alternative to Meebo, I suggest Imo.IM, which supports MySpace IM and Skype, forces HTTPS, and is Firefox-sidebar-friendly.

For the easiest and tightest security possible for Barack and Michelle, we’ll need total encryption of all messages and file transfers, between the two chatters.

Time for a favorite download of ours, the Pidgin client. You need not do anything fancy yet; Just download, install, and then run the program, adding your IM accounts with the wizard. Your friend must do the same, and then you both must install the Pidgin-Encryption Plugin. Then enable the plugin from Pidgin’s Tools menu (you may need to restart Pidgin for the plugin to be available and show up in the list).

I’m sure that you’re in a hurry to get to your spy games, but relax, we’re almost done! Go ahead and hit Pidgin’s Buddies menu to start a new IM conversation with your friend. Here’s the most important part. You see this padlock icon at the top of your IM window? You both must click on this to enable the encryption.

Pidgin will handle the exchanging of encryption keys, making the secure connection, and other nerdy stuff. Messages sent via this method are fully encrypted from your end to the other, including when routed through your IM network. I call it “Really Simple Security.”

Presented above are just two ways to encrypt and secure your instant messaging chit-chat over just about any IM network. We’re always open to other options, so please feel free to post a comment and clue us in on your favorite encryption method.

I say “more or less” because there are a few start up flaws. When you first install it, it doesn’t import all of your Facebook contacts right away. In fact when I installed the plug-in for the first time, NOTHING HAPPENED!! It was only a hour later that the Facebook contacts slowly began to appear in my contact list and even then it was only a few at a time. I have about 25 people in my Facebook friends list and only 12 are appearing right now in my Pidgin contact list several days later. Why the others are not showing up, I don’t know.

Maybe they (the contacts) have disabled Facebook Chat on their end – Facebook users do have the ability to opt out of the chat feature – or maybe they have to log into Facebook Chat for the first time before the plugin detects them? I don’t know. Either way, not everyone is there on Pidgin yet. But the people that ARE there can talk to me fine and I can talk to them. So the plugin works perfectly in that regard. So I feel I can recommend it to you and say it’s a plugin worth using and a plugin worth watching for the future. It’s clearly still a work in progress so I am confident that any existing bugs will soon be cleared up.

One of the Facebook plugin features that I really like is the ability to update your Facebook profile from inside Pidgin. When you go to the account management section of Pidgin, you will see a “Set Facebook Status” option and when you enter a status, this will automatically send that status to your account on the Facebook site.

The pros of using the plugin are obvious – all of your contacts are in the one place on Pidgin. There’s one less reason to log into Facebook and this in turn saves you time and makes you more productive. Pidgin also logs your conversations as text files which is useful if you want records of your conversations kept.

The cons of the service? Hmmmm…..you don’t get poked by using Pidgin? I guess if you like that sort of thing, using this plugin would be a bit of a bummer for you.

The developer, Eion Robb, has also made a Skype plugin for Pidgin, which I have also tried out and used for quite some time. I highly recommend it as well if you want to move all your Skype contacts onto Pidgin as well.

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. He drinks countless cups of tea a day, checks out countless websites a day – and does not like to be poked up the you-know-where on Facebook. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

Never a day goes by without automated robots sending me instant messages inviting me to talk dirty with them or to go to a certain website to stock up on my Viagra tablets. Now normally I would just block them but this only really works for one or two messages a day.

If you are getting more than a few a day, you may need Bot Sentry. Bot Sentry guards your Pidgin application and disallows anyone not on your contact list from contacting you until they have answered a pre-defined question that you have set :

As you can see, you can decide what question and answer to set and when the person has answered correctly, they can then message you and their user ID will be added to a "white list" so they don’t have to answer the question everytime they want to chat with you.

But make the question easy – don’t write something like "Please give the exact population figure of Transylvania – including all the vampires". Just give an easy question with only one possible answer that a real person can answer right away. Obviously this will stop the automated bots in their tracks and you can now enjoy your day without IM’s popping up inviting you to join the Gay Network.

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, writer and English tutor. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

There is a plug-in available for Pidgin called gSMS which will notify you by mobile phone SMS when someone tries to contact you by Pidgin and you don’t respond within a specified time frame. This would be useful if you had to step away from your desk but you were expecting an important message. By configuring this plug-in, you can be told by SMS that the person left a message and you can get back in touch with them as soon as possible.

It’s nothing fancy though. The SMS, which is sent via Google Calendar, doesn’t give you the actual text of the message. Just the name of the contact and the date / time the message was sent to you. If multiple contacts leave messages, they will be all bundled together and sent to you in one SMS.

There are four things you need to make this work :

• Pidgin installed on your computer (obviously)
• A Google account (with SMS reminders enabled on Google Calendar).
• Your mobile phone network needs to be supported by Google.
• Your PC synched with NTP (Network Time Protocol). Don’t panic. All this involves is right-clicking on your clock in the Windows system-tray, choose the option to alter your clock settings. Then choose the “internet time” tab and press the button to synchronize your computer time. That’s it.

So first download the plug-in and place the “gsms.dll” file in the Pidgin plugins folder on your PC. Then go to Pidgin itself, to your “tools” menu then “plugins” and activate the plugin.

Once activated, highlight the plugin with your mouse and press “configure plugin” at the bottom. This opens up the settings.

Enter your Google account address associated with your Google calendar along with the password to access that account. The timeout option is how long you want gSMS to wait until it bundles up all the messages to send them to you by SMS. 15 minutes is the default and sounds just about right. If you have a busy Pidgin, you don’t want to be bombarded with messages if you decide to pop out to the bathroom for 5 minutes!

The calendar option should just be left as /private/full.

As long as the plug-in is activated, all unanswered Pidgin messages will now prompt gSMS to send you a SMS to notify you that the messages have arrived. It may annoy some people eventually prompting them to turn it off but others, who rely on Pidgin to keep in contact with important business clients, may find gSMS invaluable.

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, writer and English tutor. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

Plugins

Ah! Most Open Source applications allow you to install plugins to add additional features, and Pidgin is no exception. It comes with a set of plugins that are deactivated by default. You can go to Tools >> Plugins to configure them.

Buddy Notes and Buddy Status Notifications are two cool plugins among others in the list. Can’t get enough from Pidgin? Want character counter? Maybe a plugin to synchronize your chat history across multiple PCs? Add more functionality with more plugins. Even more plugins here.

Buddy Pounces

This is a relatively powerful feature in Pidgin, and could turn very useful. Basically, it’s like making Pidgin perform an action when a buddy signs in/out/sends a message and so on.

You could set sound alerts, make Pidgin automatically open the chat window, or execute a command or an application.

So how do you set up Buddy Pounces? Just go Tools >> Buddy Pounces and click ‘Add’ to configure.

Control Idle Status

From Tools >> Preferences >> Status/Idle, you can control settings related to your Idle Status. You can configure Pidgin to report idle status based on keyboard/mouse use, or last message, the minutes before idle status and also set the status message to be displayed if you go idle.

Chat History

You can set Pidgin to log chats and conversations in basic text/html format by going to Tools >> Preferences >> Logging.

Themes

The beauty of Open Source, may be. There are a variety of themes available for Pidgin, and you could grab one yourself and give a new look to the multi protocol IM. Get Pidgin themes from here (search for pidgin).

Customize Fonts

Yes, that’s possible. If you dislike the default font sizes, you can alter them from the Tools >> Preferences >> Conversations dialog box.