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Daily Mac App: Adium
Instant messaging is an essential part of modern communications. On the Mac, we're blessed with the excellent iChat, but Apple's built-in IM solution doesn't connect to every protocol, so that's when we turn to Adium. Adium is a great long-standing piece of open-source Mac software. The reason it's so good is that it connects to almost every IM protocol under the sun. Gtalk, Facebook IM, Live Messenger, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, IRC, you name it, Adium will let you chat using it. The Swiss Army Knife of chat clients, Adium not only lets you connect and chat, but does it in a very customizable, yet Mac-like way. You've got Growl support, plugins, a menu bar icon, sounds, notifications and alerts for every action and a highly recognizable icon, even if it doesn't scream "chat" to you at first glance. Setting up Adium couldn't be easier. Select the desired protocol, plug in your login details and you're good to go. Your buddy list is downloaded from the respective sites and blended together in one list. You can sort by protocol or create your own groupings. Cross-protocol chat isn't possible for those that don't have interoperability, but that's no fault of the chat client. Adium is purely text-based, there are no built-in options for video or audio chat at the moment, but you can send files for protocols that support file transfer. Adium is available for free from the Adium team's site, and works great on almost all versions of OS X including Lion. If you've got friends spread across a plethora of IM protocols, let Adium simplify things and get you chatting to them all from one great client.
Trillian gets there first, brings Continuous Client features to latest build
Well this is rather awesome. Cerulean Studios may have just become the first company in the world to implement some of the ideas I hatched in an editorial I wrote about a little something called the Continuous Client. If you need a refresher you can read the article here, but the gist of my argument is that the work you're doing in applications on your phone, tablet, or PC should follow you around. You shouldn't have to restart each conversation or refocus your Twitter stream or re-open applications and load up files you were working on. Your devices (and their clients) should talk to each other so that you can placeshift your session from screen to screen. Well, believe it or not, someone took this to heart. The makers of the super-popular chat client Trillian have implemented Continuous Client features in the latest beta build for Windows (5.0 build 30). Amongst the new features added is the ability to share chats between devices "in realtime," allowing you to switch from PC to phone to iPad without losing the thread. Using "presence technology" the client can make logical guesses about when you're at (and not at) your PC or phone, and reroutes your notifications accordingly. The company has a blog post on all of the features of the new build, but of course, the best way to experience it is to download the software and try it out for yourself. We'd love to see your reactions and find out if it's making life easier, so sound off in the comments below.
