Multi-service IM clients

benr (apparently) - 09:54am Oct 18, 2005 PST
via email

Glenn references Fire and Adium as cross-network IM applications for Mac. I'm
currently using Proteous <http://www.defaultware.com/proteus/> which does the
same job for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, etc.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08290>

The folks in my office use iChat (via Bonjour); a couple of weeks ago I was on
a trip to a client, whose colleagues (Windows users on an Exchange network)
are all deeply into MSN, and she challenged my failure to participate.
Atavistically unwilling to download Microsoft's client, I did a quick search
and found Proteous, and used that to join in. By the time I got back to my
office, I found that the cool kids had started using Google Talk - Proteous
integrated nicely with this too.

I can't pretend that I evaluated all the options, and decided that Proteous
was superior - it was just the first reasonable looking solution I found, and
I've not tried the others Glenn mentioned. But I've certainly been very
impressed with it; it's worked absolutely without any problems, I find the
behaviour and preferences congenial, with many thoughtful touches, and it has
some nice features. (My client explained to me that one of the reasons she
and her colleagues had adopted IM so enthusiastically was that unlike email,
it didn't leave a trail. On the other hand, I'm quite anal about this sort of
thing - so i like the fact that by default Proteous archives all
conversations, with a reasonable browsing and searching interface.)

I'd definitely recommend anyone looking to replace iChat with an app that
bridges services to take a look at Proteous.

Ben Rubinstein | Email: benr

cogapp.com
Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866

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cwilbur (apparently) - Oct 19, 2005 10:37 am (#1 Total: 4)

via email

Posts: 84

Re: Multi-service IM clients

On Oct 18, 2005, at 12:54 PM, Ben Rubinstein wrote:

> I can't pretend that I evaluated all the options, and decided that
> Proteus
> was superior - it was just the first reasonable looking solution I
> found, and
> I've not tried the others Glenn mentioned.

I came back to the Mac a few years ago, having used Trillian on
Windows and GAIM on Linux, and I was not impressed with the clunky
single-protocol clients offered by Yahoo! and AOL. When I looked
around for good lightweight cross-platform clients on the Mac, I
found Adium and judged it lacking, and I'm not sure whether Fire
didn't exist yet or if I just didn't find it. So I paid for a
Proteus license, because at the time it was head and shoulders the
best client.

More recently, though, I've had cause to use both Adium and Fire --
Adium because I had a telecommuting job for a company that kept in
touch via internal IM group chats -- which Proteus does not yet
support -- and Fire because I can't be bothered to pay for another
Proteus license for my new work iMac, and I have a mild preference
for Fire over Adium. The two free clients have come a *long* way in
the past three years, and Proteus, while still quite good, is no
longer clearly the best.

If I didn't have a Proteus license already, I probably wouldn't buy
one; but having one and being satisfied with Proteus, I'm in no hurry
to switch.

Charlton

--
Charlton Wilbur
cwilbur

chromatico.net

sgb - Oct 26, 2005 1:11 pm (#2 Total: 4)

Posts: 2

An alternative is a free web-based client called meebo which supports AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and Google Talk.

http://www.meebo.com/

The big advantage is you can chat from anywhere using only a web browser.

Curtis Wilcox - Oct 27, 2005 10:43 am (#3 Total: 4)

Guest User

Posts: 1

Re: Multi-service IM clients

On Oct 26, 2005, at 4:11 PM, sgb wrote:
> An alternative is a free web-based client called meebo which supports
> AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and Google Talk.
>
> http://www.meebo.com/
>
> The big advantage is you can chat from anywhere using only a web
> browser.

There are also at least two downsides: 1) you are you're using "alpha"
quality software (according to the home page) 2) you're trusting the
people behind meebo with your account information and all your
chatting, not just that they won't use the information for nefarious
purposes but that during this early development (and later) they won't
accidentally expose this information to others.

I'd rather see something like meebo that could be installed on one's
own web server.

kevinv (apparently) - Oct 30, 2005 8:35 pm (#4 Total: 4)

via email

Posts: 1408

Re: Multi-service IM clients

--On October 27, 2005 10:43:08 AM -0700 Curtis Wilcox <cwilcox

cognize.org>
wrote:

> I'd rather see something like meebo that could be installed on one's
> own web server.

JWChat is a jabber web client you can install on your own web server (plus
it's open source so you can see if the source is doing something you don't
like).

<http://jwchat.sourceforge.net/>

It also supports Jabber server gateways/transports that allow it to connect
to ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc...

Kevin

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