AIM Triton Beta
Good
Skype (2nd time around)
Don’t have a mouthpiece, but did add a contact, so stay tuned
Semagic LJ Client
Good.
IMVU
Eh…..it could be better.
Trillian
Cute :-P, but its OK
RSSOwl
Forget it. Until the “feed:” protocol becomes as big as “http:”-based rss, I’m not keen on working with this anytime soon.
Yahoo Desktop Search
Waste of Time. I’ve gotten far better with Google’s, anyway.
NewsMonster
Don’t you DARE fuck with this. You can’t uninstall it except through uninstalling and reinstalling Mozilla Firefox.
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And that’s my review for today!
Thanks! I’m so clueless on some of these things (if you need any good TV shows recommended to you though, I’m your wolf!)
No prob. I think I’ll be doing some more “consumer reports” in the future, albeit for computer-related stuff primarily.
Heh, TV basically died to me when they replaced Newsworld International (primarily Canadian, yay!) with Currentv (primarily MTV, hell naw!). In fact, I turned off the TV at around 12 am August 1, when that happened.
Of course, whenever I get a chance (like whenever I’m back in Warner Robins to wash clothes), I watch Adult Swim (especially Family Guy, lol), but that’s about it, since I don’t have cable for the only TV in the dorm room.
try out gaim and it’s encryption plugin… i find it to be the most functional and at the same time simple.
Eh, I tried that already, a few weeks ago, actually. It was OK, for the most part, but it got sour when I tried to connect to Google Talk through Gaim’s Jabber linkage, but didn’t get through (no matter how many times I tried).
Plus, the look of it is rather blocky, it doesn’t minimize to the lower right of the system tray like the other IMs (even Trillian; means that once you close the main window, it shuts down completely), and the pings were rather….well, lets just say that I turned the volume as low as possible whenever I used it.
To its credit, it does have tabbed convos. Otherwise, however, it has yet to make **proper** way for third-party plugins (which AIM, rather surprisingly, is doing with Triton Beta, so props to them), and the options are rather limited, even for this open-source puppy. Thus, I’m not going to rule it out (I wouldn’t ever rule out open-source stuff unless it was just **that** bad), but Gaim has a long ways to go before it can get to where it needs to be as a multi-protocol third-party client.
P.S. – If it isn’t at least open-ended in a good, sensible way (like Mozilla or Winamp), chances are I’m not going to have that much love, or patience, for it after a while.
there is an option in the comfig to set it’s minimize behavior to go to the tray, Mine is there now. Also, i ALWAYS turn off the sound, although i understand gaim’s notification sounds are somewhat abrasive. The blockyness can be alleviated by any number of ‘themes’ however I should note i have never used them. As for the limited jabber functionality, i can say that it is a known bug and someone somewhere is fiddling with it now.
I started using gaim after the AIM client began not only having ads, but ads with sound!(WTF?!) that more than disrupted my computer usage. I discovered it when searching for a suitable replacement for the half-assed linux aim implementation and carried it over to my windows box. I like the fact that the encryption is more than just a token attempt (like trillians) and is rather transparent to the user.
The plugin issue is somthing that is a common issue with almost all clients. Maybe the new aim client will fix that, but i use icq,msn, y! as well as aim and do not put up with advertisments on my pc whatsoever, barring the occasional text-only google ad on my webmail acct.
Now with that out of the way, I’ll try to get in touch when i’m not working…
Aye, ads are a bitch, **especially with AIM**. Now, they did clear that up to an extent with the Triton Beta, insothat you can move the ads either to the very top of the convo window (to disappear from view as the convo continues onward) or to the buddy list itself. Also, unlike the alpha AIM with which most people are familiar now, the TB doesn’t have sound in their ads.
However, I do agree that the ads aren’t in any way necessary from AIM, so the generally low confidence with which most people, like yourself, regard AIM is, IMHO, most justified and legitimate. I, myself, wouldn’t, under any circumstances, have downloaded or installed the latest alpha AIM; from past dealings, it looks like some shitty Java put-together, with some Flash ads and **alot** of ActiveX scripting (which just spells out “I’m going to fuck your hard drive up so bad, you’ll wish you hadn’t of even downloaded me!”).
Speaking of plugins, MSN now allows for plugins, but again its not the best deal to work with, as you already mentioned. http://www.msgplus.net/pluginsdb/down/
Ah, you get used to Trillian, my friend. It’s a pretty good program. I originally started using it when I had an old and crappy computer, because it consolodated five running programs in to one running program instead. Then when I got my new computer however many months back, I just installed it on there as well because I had gotten used to the really straightforward interface.
I set it up so that all contacts are sorted in to no group. So it’s just an alphabetical list of who is on. Plus everything has uniform formatting, which I find to be a perk.
Aye, good point.
The interface is pretty straightforward, plus I find the pings to be, in a way, relaxing, compared to the other IMs’ sounds.
There was more that they could’ve done for Trillian Basic, but its probably the most simplistic approach to multi-protocol instant messaging that I have yet seen (although, again, I’m not going to rule out Gaim yet, since, unlike Trillian, Gaim is open-source).
I’m waiting for the other web portals to take up the Jabber/XMPP, though, in the same way as Google just did over two months ago or so, so that we won’t have to rely upon Yahoo, MSN, or AOL/ICQ as much anymore.