RGdot

Tag: messaging

  • Chit Chat For Facebook 1.5

    Chit Chat For Facebook 1.5

    Chit Chat for Facebook was first reviewed almost two years ago here on RGdot, now it is back at version 1.5 with more polish and features. Beside the chat or IM and status update options it now offers more control over looks and other features like pop up and other types of notification.

    Chit Chat for Facebook

    Changing colours, text size and font are just one of the tweaks and there are many others. These include audio notification and flashing taskbars for various events like new messages and friends logging in, saving a log of facebook messages, chatting in a tabbed interface and dividing friends in groups to more easily find them.

    Chit Chat features shortcuts like Ctrl+M to hide the program quickly, Ctrl+L to log out, Alt+C to show the buddy or friends list, Ctrl+W to write on a friend’s wall – which can also be done by right clicking the friend’s name – Alt+2 and Alt+1 to move to next and previous conversation tabs and more. These shortcuts can be viewed and changed in Tools—>Preferences—>Shortcuts. Setting up a proxy server to bypass workplace blocks is also available via the preferences.

    Chit Chat does have ads and asks for permission for other extras upon installation. It requires Windows XP and newer. A potentially useful feature is the option to export configured settings to use on a another installation.

  • Raindrop Is A New Messaging Experience From Mozilla

    Raindrop is one of the latest attempts to centralize all messaging and social netwroking activities on the web. It is an as yet unavailable prototype from mozilla messaging,  the people developing the Thunderbird email client.
    At first look at the early screenshots and concept videos available at the above site it looks like the developers are trying to aggregate all activity, twitter, email, youtube etc. into one place. As such this is not necessarily a new idea and places like Friendfeed (the link is to RGdot.com’s Friendfeed page) come close to doing that right now. I think what Raindrop tries to improve on is that experience but by allowing better syncing between devices, promising more customization and above all using an engine that can decide and help the user divide messages between the important or personal and the bulk or the spam – without going through filters or forever browsing through junk –  it can be even more. Not to mention that this is an open source project which goes beyond supplying an API, like most services like twitter already do. Raindrop aims to allow it to be used to store info locally or on a server. All these therefore make it really fully extensible and customizable.
    A promising new tool which may be able to stake a place on many desktops and gadgets.

  • Digsby, The All In One Online World

    Digsby, The All In One Online World

    Digsby is one of the newer ways to communicate with friends and colleagues across different protocols. It has been available to the world for around a year or so. Unlike the somewhat disappointing and overly long in alpha or in beta Trillian the builds or versions appear quickly and work pretty well.

    Digsby requires a separate sign up to keep track of your different logins and accounts. Some privacy concerns are obvious here but are addressed as best as possible on a ‘Security Practices’ page. Over all a good product with responsive support and continuous development, at least at the time of this writing.

    The protocols supported are as follows AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, ICQ, and Jabber in the IM department; Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP for email checking and notification; and Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn for social network updates and their respective chats. One of the most interesting aspects is a publicly accessible Wishlist that includes stats and votes to prioritize user input. Some of the current highly rated wishes are multi-person conversations and plug-in support. Of note is that audio and/or video chat is not natively supported but the program launches Tokbox, which can be accessed within the conversation by clicking the video button, where a new window to the TokBox service is generated and is accessible via a link to the friend at the other end of the conversation.

    First start requires signing up for the aforementioned account and adding the respective protocol logins (see image below). One very user friendly feature of Digsby that should be mentioned is that if a conversation is minimized any new arriving message is not only viewable via a small popup near the bottom of the screen but it is also possible to reply using only that popup without maximizing the program. Very handy for keeping distractions to a minimum.

    digsby

    Digsby is freeware but the developers readily admit to the need for a revenue model and are trying to keep it to unobtrusive measures like a Yahoo toolbar and that may even be an opt-in at installation. Check out the complete feature list here. It is currently available for Windows but as many of the other Wishlist items Mac and Linux versions are coming soon. Sign up here to get notified and perhaps further encourage the work they are doing to make those versions.