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I haven't looked deep enough into it to know the exact procedure but http://www.trillian.cc/Trillian allows for an end-to-end secure session with another Trillian user. I haven't bothered with any other IM clients since I bought Trillian so I couldn't say about the others.

Before I knew about Trillian, which I've been using for over four-to-five years now, this might have been big news for me. Sure I've heard a complaints about Trillian's clunky interface (IMHO, I haven't had any problems with it), but it sure does the job for me. It's much better than having three separate IM clients cluttering my machine.

The merging of networks does have its advantages for the developers of consolidated IM clients since they can now use the same protocol for two networks.

Reuters is reporting on the new release of Yahoo! Messenger, which will allow third-party applications and plugins to run within the Messenger environment.

Use Trillian. http://trillian.cc/ =)

Really, I'm surprised Y! Messenger's not dead already. I think I have maybe one contact that uses Yahoo's messenger. Just about everyone I know uses MSN. Even ICQ's less ubiquitous than it was six years ago.

but ALL of the people I know use MSN

Trillian (pro) is a lot nicer than the MSN client.

Precisely. Pretty much everyone I know uses Gaim or Trillian, and my typical family calls for tech support and spyware removal usually involve uninstalling AIM in favor of one of the two.

Trillian for Instant Messaging

FoxIt! PDF Reader

for starters....

Besides that and games, I'm not sure what else I couldn't do without.

AVG:
http://free.grisoft.com/
Ad-aware:
http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Editi on/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1
Spybot Search and Destroy:
http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000 -8022_4-10401314.html?tag=lst-0-2
Hijack This!:
http://www.download.com/HijackThis/3000-8022_4-103 79544.html?tag=lst-0-1
Firefox:
http://www.firefox.com/
Trillian:
http://www.trillian.cc/
Spywareblaster:
http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4 -10486084.html?tag=lst-0-1
And just about anything from:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/index.html

Let see, we already have all this with Trillian and Adium. Why do I need IBM doing it?

So, it's just a clone of MSN written by someone else, still for windows?

Why is this a big deal?

If it offered multiple clients like Trillian does, or had some snazzy features that MSN didn't already have, I could see it being big news...

Strange indeed, seeing as MSN is probably the least popular messenger between AIM/Yahoo/MSN... I just don't understand the motivation behind writing a clone. Anyone see something I'm missing?

Trillian Pro can do that -- including SIP messaging with Live Communications Server -- with the (very alpha) SIP plugin for Trillian located here.

Sounds like you're looking for Trillian with the Jabber plugin (and some instructions) to be able to connect to all three.

Anyway, I abandoned having more than one IM client installed a while ago. ICQ, for example, has always taken up gobs of RAM, and was one of the main reasons I wanted to consolidate a few years ago. I used to use Gaim, which is a good open source client that can connect to most networks (including Jabber, so it'll work with Google Talk). For whatever reason though, it kept crashing on me whenever I'd send a file, so now I'm using Trillian (Pro), which has worked very well for me. (Much better than the 1.x version I tried several years ago, if anyone hasn't tried it in a while.)

As for the networks themselves, I have contacts on the major four (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and really, the features of each aren't that different when they're all in the same client; it's all mostly small things. ICQ doesn't have the thing that shows when you're typing, for example. But for me, if they can do text chat well and can send files, they're fine for my usage.

Sounds like you're looking for Trillian with the Jabber plugin (and some instructions) to be able to connect to all three.

Anyway, I abandoned having more than one IM client installed a while ago. ICQ, for example, has always taken up gobs of RAM, and was one of the main reasons I wanted to consolidate a few years ago. I used to use Gaim, which is a good open source client that can connect to most networks (including Jabber, so it'll work with Google Talk). For whatever reason though, it kept crashing on me whenever I'd send a file, so now I'm using Trillian (Pro), which has worked very well for me. (Much better than the 1.x version I tried several years ago, if anyone hasn't tried it in a while.)

As for the networks themselves, I have contacts on the major four (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and really, the features of each aren't that different when they're all in the same client; it's all mostly small things. ICQ doesn't have the thing that shows when you're typing, for example. But for me, if they can do text chat well and can send files, they're fine for my usage.

Sounds like you're looking for Trillian with the Jabber plugin (and some instructions) to be able to connect to all three.

Anyway, I abandoned having more than one IM client installed a while ago. ICQ, for example, has always taken up gobs of RAM, and was one of the main reasons I wanted to consolidate a few years ago. I used to use Gaim, which is a good open source client that can connect to most networks (including Jabber, so it'll work with Google Talk). For whatever reason though, it kept crashing on me whenever I'd send a file, so now I'm using Trillian (Pro), which has worked very well for me. (Much better than the 1.x version I tried several years ago, if anyone hasn't tried it in a while.)

As for the networks themselves, I have contacts on the major four (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and really, the features of each aren't that different when they're all in the same client; it's all mostly small things. ICQ doesn't have the thing that shows when you're typing, for example. But for me, if they can do text chat well and can send files, they're fine for my usage.

Hmm... I use Trillian Pro, and the bots were never added to my contact list.

I guess it must not *snicker* fully support the AIM protocol or something.

How disappointing... ;^)

http://www.trillian.cc/

I just discovered yesterday that Trillian responds quite well to IRC commands.
I personally don't use it, but I msg'ed my Trillina using friend with "/me" and my text showed up in purple for him.

(I was asking my friend why he had been searching E-Bay for a DNA Sequencer and his response was "i'll give you a clue, it begins with 't' and ends with 'aking over the world'")

I've recently installed Trillian and I noticed it very casually highlights words in your IM-windows, which have Wikipedia entries : You can then either highlight them (and it will popup a small description) or click on it, to go to its Wikipedia entry.
Very cool stuff in my opinion.

I was waiting for someone to mention this. Kudos.

And I'm not sure what it means exactly, but Trillian lists "AIM\ICQ" as one plugin, one entity. I know AOL bought ICQ but I don't know what that means for the networks - I assume they use the same back end but are kept physically or logically separate. I'm not saying multimillion dollar buyouts are the same as open infrastructure, but it disproves this topic to a point. Maybe a mass merger like Microsoft\Yahoo is the best we can hope for in terms of interoperability.

Either way, don't expect open infrastructure any time soon. Closed standards with proprietary front ends means companies can jam banner ads on people's desktops. If you hate ads as much as I do, use an alternative.

GAIM
Trillian

Which is why I like to use Trillian. It's pretty convenient, and you don't have to have 3 separate programs. It works well with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and a host of other protocols/clients/whathaveyou.

The free version is good, but if you're willing to fork up $25, then the Pro version is worth it as well.

Far and away the best IM client out on the market. No, its not open sores, but still, it's damn good.

http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/
http://www.trillian.cc/

As of right now I use a Trillian plugin to notify my when I have a new instant message by flashing the three LED's on my keyboard.

This is useful to me because I usually have IM sound off (I have a lot going at once and it gets annoying as hell) and when I'm passing by my computer at home I can take a quick peek at my keyboard to see if I have any messages rather than go to the computer, turn on the monitor, unlock windows, and check my message windows.

Also when running full screen games or applications, a secondary visual indicator comes in handy.

As of right now I use a Trillian plugin to notify my when I have a new instant message by flashing the three LED's on my keyboard.

This is useful to me because I usually have IM sound off (I have a lot going at once and it gets annoying as hell) and when I'm passing by my computer at home I can take a quick peek at my keyboard to see if I have any messages rather than go to the computer, turn on the monitor, unlock windows, and check my message windows.

Also when running full screen games or applications, a secondary visual indicator comes in handy.

If you want encrypted IM, why not use http://www.trillian.cc/ Trillian? That client supports encryption over multiple networks, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and I think others.

You can use Trillian and probably even use GoogleTalk without the ad words.

I believe you should check your information. Only AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC are available on Basic. This page clearly shows that Jabber - along with Rendevous and Groupwise - is not available on Basic.

I don't think monopoly means what you think it does.

"character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons"

Trillian already does this, there are at least 50 builtin emoticons that can be selected with the mouse or typed; the sequence is sent as a characters and replaced with a graphic icon at the other end. It gets annoying sometimes as any 'complex' piece of communication (with symbols and nested parentheses, etc.) often comes out at the other end full of pigs or smiley faces wearing sunglasses...

Back when I still used Windows, I really liked Trillian. Only drawbacks I remember: not open source, no Jabber support. GAIM worked for me too though, I'm still hapilly using that on Linux.

I use Trillian as an IM client and it does something similar to this. I get underlined links with more information from Wikimedia if words in the message match an existing wiki topic. I think it is pretty cool.

What ever thats not gonna do any better than trillian (http://www.trillian.cc/) I think AOL is just trying to dominate the market AGAIN!

There's no tabbed messaging

Tabbed messaging has been in Trillian since 2.0. See here.

you still have to have an account with each service you want to use

For at least a couple of the services, you can do this right through Trillian (for the others, it loads up a web page just like the official client does). I don't see how this is any different than what you'd do with an official client.

Trillian is basically just an IM client aggregator- it doesn't provide any messaging capabilities itself

Well, being an IM client aggregator pretty much makes it a killer app in itself (yes, I know there are others, but that alone instantly puts it a rung above all "official" IM clients, as does the lack of ads).

Being nicely designed and skinnable puts it yet again a step above even most other aggregators. Trillian 3.0 is so far ahead of any other IM client in terms of clean visual presentation throughout that it's not even funny. All apps should look this good by default, and if by some remote chance you don't like it, you can just download a new skin. The entire UI is skinnable, not just the outer edges. It also supports all sorts of plugins, from RSS readers to IM forwarders to weather.

Having features like tabbed messaging and 128-bit encryption is yet another point in its favor. No other freely downloadable Windows-based IM clients have these features, that I know of.

In short, Trillian does a lot of things, does some things no other IM client does, and everything it does do, it does well. AOL is apparently copying many of the features of Trillian in Triton, which should tell you something - I don't personally know anyone who actually uses the regular AIM client anymore.

Trillian works.

The big thing missing from Trillian currently and for a while is reliability with regards to sending messages over the MSN network. Take a look at this thread where the issue has been ignored for well over a year, while present far longer.

Does anyone archive IM?

I do, but that's because I use Trillian which makes logging a breeze, and Trillian's Activity History feature makes these archived logs actually useful, being able to "bookmark" points in the conversation as well as search the logs in several useful ways.

Does anyone archive IM?

I do, but that's because I use Trillian which makes logging a breeze, and Trillian's Activity History feature makes these archived logs actually useful, being able to "bookmark" points in the conversation as well as search the logs in several useful ways.

Just about every email program that I've used has managed to export to CSV. A few web-based email systems didn't allow such imports and some hunting on the web found some sort of convertor (like YahooPOPS!, etc.) that converted to POP and then I exported them to CSV using Eudora or Outlook, or whatever program I was particularly enamored with.
Admittedly, sometimes the column names didn't match up ("Sender" v "From"), etc., but for the most part that how I did it. I also made an effort to keep the number of email accounts that I had to a minimum. At this point of time, most everything is stored in the form of .PST files that are archived on CDs and on an external hard drive.
I also made an effort to keep my email accounts to a minimum, which probably made this entire process significantly easier and when I did close an account (like when I finished work at a company), I exported the emails from there and kept them in .PST in case I needed them for anything later on.
As far as indexing works - I have them stored in 6 month segments (Jan97-Jun97, Jul97-Dec97, ...), since I can usually remember roughly when I got an email that I was looking for - alternatives include perhaps by name of sender or company.
I do archive IMs - Trillian worries about it for me. :)
Hope this helps.

1. Trillian. SecureIM, but Windows only.
2. SILC. Open encryption standard, many *nix ports.
3. JohnyTech. Windows encryption for a bunch of different IM protocols.
That ought to get you started.

At least in the latest Pro version, Trillian has integrated Wikipedia lookup support for many terms. I find it quite useful when stuff comes up that I don't know exactly what it is, and also just for laughs to see what it says about some common stuff.

It even recognizes CowboyNeal.

Music - XMMS (WinAMP on Windows), is there even a comparison to Windows Media Player here?

WinAMP ist not FOSS. It's a free (beer) closed source app.
Both are just a joke comparing to iTunes.

Video - MPlayer, it even runs without X Window. Can Windows Media Player run video in MS-DOS?

What kind of argument is this? Who cares about DOS? WMP is OK when you install the missing codecs. (I prefer VLC though)

Web Browser - Mozilla FireFox. Internet Exploder doesn't even compare.

And Opera? Firefox is also my favourite browser, but Opera has many interesting features that you can't find anywhere else. Opera is commercial or free (beer) software, but not FOSS.

File Browsing - Nautilus, Konqueror. They crash 100% less of the time that Windows Explorer crashes.

What are you doing with Explorer? I didn't see it crash the last couple of... er... years.

And no annoyingly built-in Internet Explorer that's available even if I denied access to iexplore.exe (which I do on spyware-infested clients' computers).

How about blocking Explorer.exe and deleting iexplore.exe? (That's what I do when I have do mess with Windows.)

And let's not mention the horrid Mac OS X versions of MS Office.

Yeah, MS Office:mac is sooo bad when compared against GNUmeric and OpenOffice. OK, GNUmeric and OpenOffice only run in an X-Window, don't support drag&drop, looks ugly-as-hell, etc. while MS Office supports all that stuff. Wow, GNUmeric and OpenOffice are soooo superior.....
(BTW: Yes, I know about NeoOffice/J - it's my main Office suite. But NeoOffice is != OpenOffice)
Abiword compares to Wordpad, not Word (or OpenOffice Writer).

Instant Messenger - Well, GAIM may be missing some features of proprietary AOL AIM, but one of those features missing is the spyware.

Trillian? How about that?

Programming - Do I even need to compare the long list of free, open-source and standardized Unix/Linux tools to the not-quite-as-affordable MS Visual Studio??

A lot of developers say that VisualStudio is the best programming environment. Others say it's Xcode. Both aren't FOSS.

PS: No, I'n not bashing FOSS. Most apps I use are FOSS like Firefox, Thunderbird, or Fire Messenger, but theres more closed source software that's better than it's FOSS counterparts than just Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Opera is cool. Trillian is cool. MS Office:mac, Explorer (not IE), or Windows Media Player not so bad either.

That's all I can think of for now...how about listing some free (good) games too? :)

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Outpost Firewall
• Cygwin
• The GIMP
• Spybot
• adAware
• Trillian
• Google Desktop Search
• SETI@home
• iTunes

Because, you know, shunning every non-geek out there, and hell, lots of geeks too, is the cool thing to do. By stating such things like "OMFG itz aim, u no America On Line, thatz so not l33t im not gonna use that" we demonstrate our superiour intellectual capability. Why would any self respecting Slashdot user have an AIM account? Because they want to talk to be other people, who just so happen to have an aim account. I think a proper question would be, why would any self respecting Slashdot user have the AIM client, when there are Better Alternatives out there?

Because some of the IM users at my company use AIM.

However, I use Trillian as my client, so that I can also exchange msgs with the MSN and Yahoo IM users.

No, we don't have a consistent policy. We should. And we should really be using a secure server of our own (like Jabber). But, that's beyond my ability to change.

Erm, am I the only /. user that actively uses Trillian?? I almost never use AIM, MSN messenger, and Y! messenger, but I use Trilly for all of them to talk. ICQ and IRC are available to me as well, but I have no need for them.

Staying ontopic, I'm not suprised that AIM/AOL screwed up. They're not really the most "true-user-friendly" in the business. Bloated software, etc.

This is one good reason not to use the official IM clients. ;) Trillian, Gaim, Miranda IM are apparently good (I've only used Miranda IM though). Of course they may not all support *all* the options the official clients do. (e.g. ICQ and AIM and MSN group chat is absent from Miranda IM AFAIK, though others can start a MSN group chat with you)

Whereas Trillian launches the system default browser, and Hotmail renders perfectly in FireFox here.

Just because you use the protocol does not mean you are stuck with the bloatware client. Try GAIM or Trillian. They have a nice amount of features, operate on the AOL IM Network without all the bloat of the official AIM Client.

Oh yeah.. well.. Trillian is.. uhh.. a trillian times better.

PS: I use gaim

Harmony!=FairPlay
apple could keep upgrading Fairplay [just like yahoo and msn keep upgrading their authentication scheme
of their IMs to keep away third-party IM's like gaim and trillian]...
would Harmony keep up with Fairplay just as well ?.

Small size and big functionality = Essential place on thumbdrive

Would also stick on Trillian (windows only, but handy none the less if you are that way inclined). Thanks to those with the Firefox information too!!

The only other nice IRC client in windows that I can think of is Mirc