Ok, so everyone has their own preference on instant messaging, email, blogging, so forth and so on. Well, here’s a useful tip! Instead of having 8 different apps/windows open, use one! There’s a few options you’ve got here, so I’ll touch on the more popular ones, and let you decide.

Definitely a smart choice, supporting most of the common protocols. Here’s a list!

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• IRC
• MSN
• MySpaceIM
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

There’s even added support via plugins. To name a few:

xfire, facebook IM, twitter, encryption, spam protection, snarl support, and customized buddy notification sounds.  There’s quite a few more.

Visit: Pidgin

Digsby

Digsby is the “uber” messenger. It does what Pidgin does, and tends to use a tad more memory (RAM) when it does, but the experience is very gratifying. It integrates the traditional buddy icons, allows for voice/cam chat, file transfers, all of the normal stuff, and also supports Facebook IM, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pop3 email and webmail like Yahoo and MSN. Not convinced? Here’s a screenshot!

Your “Current Status” box can be moved anywhere within the Digsby window, as well as all of the other major componants. Just grab and drag! It also comes with the option for taskbar icons so you can see your message count and access the various windows right from there.

These two are probably the top two multi-protocol messengers out there, but there’s a few others. To name a few:

• Miranda (A little like Pidgin)
  
• Tokbox (Video Messenger plus MSN Yahoo etc)
• Trillian (The old client fails, bad. There’s hope. Trillian Astra)

There’s a few more out there. If you know of one that I didn’t mention that you think deserves a second look, let me know!

My choice? Digsby owns when it comes to checking my webmail and updating social networks. <3

Digsby Icon/Logo created by Michael Knight and is protected under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Michael Knight is not affiliated with Digsby, it’s creators, or its affiliates. Asoldier.net nor David Bixler are affiliated in any way with Michael Knight except for the use of the Digsby Icon intended for use with the Object Dock application.

So far, I’ve ran up against a few bumps with the WeGame client. A few issues regarding program detection, missing sound layers, and video upload flukes. Don’t worry, I’ll write a pretty detailed report and put all of the tasty bits down for you.

Aside from a slightly buggy client, the WeGame community looks promising. The community isn’t exclusive to wegame generated media, so users can post whatever they like.

Fortunately, the client is still in beta, so we expect to see great improvement at the imminent full version.

The site itself is pretty well-built, so it’s feature-packed, and proving to be pretty fun to navigate.

Looks good eh?

I have a few other things going on too, as you may or may not notice. I’m on the “Air testers list” for Peoplebrowsr.com’s up-and-coming AIR app. So, hopefully, that’s another tasty review coming up.

I’ve got a few things on my plate, along with my imminant PCS move to Fort Campbell where I’ll be finishing the last 2 years of my current enlistment as Active Army, I’ll be job hunting. At the same time, I’m going to try to finish up my Associates degree. I’m not sure what I want to major in, but I assume it’s going to be pretty easy to figure out.

I’ll be writing a few reviews over the next couple of weeks. Next on the list is WeGame. A social video and screenshot recording and sharing service. Apparently there’s a good number of games already supported. I own a few of them, so I’ll be testing the free product out on a few games, including Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament 3, and others.

Follow WeGame on Twitter and/or Visit WeGame.com

Shortly after that I’ll be doing a trial run of Affiliate Paradise. It was suggested to me by JR Razmus as a suggestion for making money online.

If you have a suggestion for a comparison or review, please let me know.

-David

I have three laptops and a desktop, and even though I don’t really need all three to get things done, it certainly helps to distribute the load between the machines. If something bad does happen, not all is lost, because not all of my work is on any one machine. It also helps by providing more workspace.

So, how do I turn multiple machines into seamless usable workspace? Easy! Stardock Multiplicity allows you to use one computer’s peripherals including mouse, keyboard, printer, sound system, and more. You can even move files from pc to pc simply by copying, dragging the cursor to the other computer’s screen seamlessly, and pasting!

There are a couple of conflicts here and there, but you can usually solve them by pressing ALT+TAB. Other than that, it works like a charm! Learn more about it here.

It looks like I’m back in business writing software reviews again. I will be writing a thorough review of MS Expression Web tomorrow. It’s taking entirely too long to download this evening so I am left to install it and begin working on it tomorrow. A fellow Twitter pal has asked me to give her some feature comparison/requests. I’m currently downloading the software and preparing to install it. Tomorrow I will go through all of the focal points, test load times, and compare features. I’ve been using Dreamweaver for years and I have to say, it’s going to take some powerful improvements to get me to switch.

If there are some features you want to point out, now’s the time to speak up because this might be a real chance to finally get that doodad you wanted.