At one time I was going to make at least one free software recommendation a week. At some point I realized that in order to do this, sooner or later I would either run dry of suggestions, or make suggestions of products I really haven’t throughly tested. So I changed my mind and decided to only write about programs I have used for quite some time and really like. One of the first was Miro
Tonight’s pick is an all in one Instant Messenger, E-mail and Social Network client called Digsby. I’ve been running Digsby for around a year and it is really nice. I’ve set it up to connect to my AIM, MSM, Yahoo Chat, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all my various e-mail addresses. It sits nicely in my system tray and when I click on it, it pops up a sidebar on the left side of my screen that lists all the services I have it monitoring. If I click on the MSM bar it expands so I can see who is online and if I click on anyone who is online, I’m chatting with them just like I was running MSM. Instead of having to load all those different chat programs, I just run Digsby. Of course there are other programs like this, I use to run Trillian but it felt kinda clunky me and I haven’t tried the newer version of Trillian which now also supports Twitter and E-mail. However, I see Trillian still offers a pro version which isn’t free so it doesn’t totally fall into my “Free Software” category. Digsby also has several options for notification. Mine is configured so it pops up a little alert window. This is real handy for Twitter. I see the complete tweet and have options to retweet or reply to it. If I click on the notification window it will take me to that tweets page and I will already be logged in to Twitter. The same goes for any notification window, by clicking on it. If it’s one of my webmail accounts, I will be logged in and taken to that e-mail, or if it’s a pop mail account, it will launch whatever application you have chosen for your e-mail, such as Outlook.
Here’s a sample of the features in Digsby:
Instant Messaging
One combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts.
Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag tabs out into their own windows for important conversations.
Rename contacts with an alias so you don’t have to remember buddy names like ‘giantsfan123′.
If one of your friends has more than one IM account you can combine them into a single merged contact to eliminate duplicate buddies.
Send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window.
The InfoBox lets you check everyone’s status message and profile just by moving your mouse down the list.
Changing your status has never been easier. just one click right on the buddy list!
Multitask while you chat. Minimize the IM window and you see popups of new IM’s. Best of all, you can reply right from the popup and get back to what you were doing.
Log conversation history and find the information you need our search-enabled log viewer.
And so much more.
Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby.
Get popup notifications when new email arrives. Clicking a popup takes you right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts.
The email InfoBox gives you a snapshot of your unread messages with just one click
Perform actions such as “Mark as Read” or “Report Spam” right from the email InfoBox.
Send emails to your friends right from the IM window. The email is sent directly from any account digsby is tracking for you.
Social Networking
Stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts.
Receive alerts of events such as new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc.
The social network InfoBox gives you a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to. Everything from new photos, to status updates, to upcoming birthdays is just a click away.
Set your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn status right from Digsby.
Personalize
Customize digsby with application skins to give it a personal look and feel.
Change the way your conversations look with themes – everything from simple AIM-style windows to 3D conversation bubbles.
Complete control over the layout of buddies on the buddy list. Change everything from buddy icon size to whether or not to show a snippet of their away message.
Sort your buddy list how ever you want! You can organize buddies manually, by status, by service, by name or by log size to place those you communicate with most at the top. You can even choose a secondary sorting method.
Customizable notification system lets you choose what events you want to be alerted about and how.
If you give it a try, or are already using it, please leave a comment to let myself and others know what you think of it. If you’d like to see it action, you can watch the video demo of it. Or just download Digsby.
