Digsby

I’ve been playing with some software over the Christmas Holidays and I’m quite impressed with Digsby which is a multi-protocol IM (Instant Messaging) client.

On the never-ending quest for PC environmental simplification, I have used a number of multi-protocol IM clients over the years including; Miranda, Pidgin and Trillian but never stuck with any of them. Up until a few weeks ago, I had been using Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk (which alerted me to emails from my primary Google Apps account) and I used a Google Gadget on my PartnerPage (the Google Apps equivalent to iGoogle) to keep track of my Facebook alerts. Digsby does all of the aforementioned centrally. For example, Digsby notifies me when I receive email (this can be setup via POP3 or IMAP settings), when I receive Facebook alerts and I can chat across multiple IM clients simultaneously (Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk). If so desired, you can even log into the same IM client multiple times (i.e. have two Windows Live Messenger accounts active simultaneously). Digsby also supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo!, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. The only short-coming of Digsby is that it doesn’t support IRC (yet) but, for most computer users, this is a moot point. Digsby is also skin-able.