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.