ID:102240
 
Keywords: awesome, digsby
So for about a decade now I've been in possession of an account on every major messaging service (ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger) and more recently an account on Google Talk, and this quickly became cumbersome and irritating to deal with. Naturally, I went in search of a method to combine these all into a single window to regain a sense of simplicity, and in some cases, to avoid the official client altogether (I haven't liked AIM since it went Triton, nor MSN since it turned into Windows Live). It becomes impossible to manage five different client windows on screen, not to mention that until 2004 I was not in possession of a computer that could handle all at once, or some clients altogether (Windows Live Messenger for instance refuses to load on my old desktop PC, likely due to my 400+ contact list).

My first venture into multiprotocol clients was Trillian, and I was using this on an old Compaq Presario for some time. I even actually bought the premium service for a couple of years (what that netted me I can no longer recall) and it worked well enough, though admittedly the computer it ran on was garbage and usability problems were common, ranging from taking several minutes to start up to video or audio chat not working at all. It still combined all of my contact lists into one area, though, and at a time when I was still using the enigmaster2002 moniker concurrently with Mobius Evalon, it certainly bolstered a since of simplicity to bring all of these clients together with a pair of screen names each.

While Trillian gave me a taste of what these types of programs could do, the interface was internally skinned and often overcomplicated and it quickly negated any benefit it might have had. I then moved onto GAIM but it quickly became apparent that the client as it was when I tried it (many years ago) was not what I was looking for -- every contact that existed on both screennames for the same service were doubled on the contact list, and at a time where I was migrating identities it took me about fifteen minutes to abandon it and uninstall.

I continued to use Trillian for a few more years until I decided to take another peek around for clients, finding Miranda IM. This was after I started attending college (mid 2006) but before I procured a laptop (early 2010), so I carried a collection of flash drives around, one of which filled up with PortableApps including Miranda. The program was definitely simple but was rigid on its extensibility, making it impossible to perform the rare video chat or make use of other such fringe features of the individual clients. Nevertheless, I stuck with it until I got my laptop.

After I had bought my Asus laptop I searched around again for multiprotocol clients. I decided to revisit Pidgin (formerly GAIM) since at this point I had long since killed off my older monikers, and Pidgin served me pretty well for the last eight months. It has some odd issues though, such as crashing the moment my laptop went into hibernate.

I'm not entirely sure what prompted me to search for a replacement for Pidgin. I think lately I'm just in the mood for finding things that are better than what I settle for (such as my finding Lunascape), but whatever it was, I stumbled upon Digsby. Admittedly, it has a stupid name and program icon (what is that thing anyways, an egg wearing a baseball cap?) but it's certainly a case of not judging a book by its cover, as the website really seems to undersell what exactly Digsby is capable of.

Digsby comes stock with the basic feature of adding accounts from messenger services including AIM, GTalk and Facebook Chat, but its features beyond that are what make it amazing. Metacontacts are a stock feature and allow you to group contacts together, such as grouping together the same person's MSN and Yahoo accounts. You can add all of your email accounts to it and it will check for new mail at an interval specified by you, in addition to letting you check and delete mail from the Digsby client itself, regardless of it being a custom IMAP account or MSN hotmail. It allows you to keep current on Facebook and even let you like or comment on wall posts right from within the program.

Digsby not only created a competent multiprotocol client, but has gone beyond that to integrate functionality you wouldn't even expect an instant messenger client to provide.
The newest version of Windows Live (one that's currently in Beta right now) also integrates facebook functionality. As soon as that Windows Live becomes standard, I'm abandoning it, as it really is fugly.
I've had problems with Windows Live crashing among other things. I also found my way to Digsby.

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I Hate How I have to use Skype to talk with YouTube friends and MSN for BYOND Friends is their a service that puts MSN And Skype together? I don't want to use MSN and Skype I just want one program to do the needs. Skype and MSN do the same thing, just different people use MSN and different people use Skype do you know how to combine them?
I'm not certain what makes Skype so scary because it has always seemed to pose a novel problem. Every instance of a Skype plugin has required Skype be installed to the system, and some low-brow ones even just launch Skype from the third-party client.

There must be some factor preventing full third-party support of Skype, and I'd bet on it being legal.
Disby has a horrible Interface, I tested it, Don't like it.

Edit - Actually I am starting to get use to it.
Dude I love your blog posts. Please Make More.