While many folks live and breathe instant messaging, or “IMing” to those younger than me, I simply don’t. I use email constantly, but only rarely use the IM, like when I need to have a specific conversation with a particular individual. Actually, I’d rather call them on the telephone, but that’s another story.
The other problem I have with instant messaging is that there are so many different services. I have accounts at Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk and MSN which should be more than anyone would ever need. Still, I get encouraged to join just one more, like Skype, for example. Every time I join one of these, and setup my buddy list, I get one more little chiclet in my tray on the bottom of my screen. And who really knows how much RAM gets used up when there are so many running simultaneously. Then, when I’m trying to write an article, buddies come out of the woodwork, and I end up getting nothing done.
One solution is to setup a program that lets us get on several IM networks simultaneously. A good freeware solution is Trillian. There are two drawbacks though: it doesn’t include Google Talk, and it needs to be installed to the computer. If you’re at work, or at an internet café, then Trillian is not going to work.
Enter Meebo, a web page based portal for instant messaging. From the home page, we can see that the various IM services. We can sign into any one of them, and be connected. I like that we don’t even need a Meebo account to sign into our IM service. Also, Meebo includes Google Talk.
For those of us with several IM accounts, then it’s worth creating a Meebo account. This way we can just sign into Meebo, and then be connected to all of our IM accounts at once. I also like the idea of no software installation or hassle. This is especially attractive for use at work or at a public computer where in my testing, it worked fine behind a corporate firewall. Our Meebo account can even save our conversations, if we wish. The other good part is that when I don’t want to be accessible, I just don’t open the Meebo page.
While it’s the rare case that a web service can do the job better than an installed software application, I am of the opinion that Meebo is the preferred way to instant message. Especially for casual users of IMing, across several computers, it’s simply the best solution. Meebo offers a quality solution to our IM needs.
Free.
–Jonas
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