Digsby

[jst5150]

Recommending this program. It collects all your instant messagers -- AOL, MSN, Google and others -- as well as Email, Facebook and Twitter stuff, onto one bar.

I loaded it last night, configured it with everything and was chatting with someone in about 20 minutes. There was also mail streaming in from GMail and my personal box. I have it running on a Vista-based system.

It's free. It was also named a CNet top 10 product for the year.

www.digsby.com

[ATP]

CNET seems to be somewhat schizophrenic in its attitude towards digsby:


[13-8-09]
http://download.cnet.com/Digsby/3000...html?tag=mncol

[13-8-09]
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4...=rtcol;relnews

[29-9-08]
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4...=rtcol;relnews


Yet: elsewhere on the site, in the news section, it is given 'copy' which is good to glowing.Appears that one of their young turk tech journalists is trying to make a name for himself by creating a mountain out of a mole hill.

I have never particularly liked technology journalism, for it is mainly based on hype and/or "gee whiz" adoration of technology per se.Though there are some good technology journalists eg. NYT. But,it appears that this CNET journalist in particular deserves to be given the proverbial bitch slap, as you say in the US.

[Williebee]

I recommend Digsby as well. I've used it for about a year now. I have far too many different IM accounts, thanks to different areas of school techs preferring different IM clients/FB, etc. It's worked great for me.

[ATP]

WB,

You're not fazed by the hullaballoo that CNET is raising about what they see as digsby's shady practices (which others see as a 'storm in a teacup')?

[Williebee]

Not really, ATP. It isn't a "shady practice" if they are telling you what they are doing up front. Sure, it's an "opt out", but you CAN opt out. Shady would be telling you you can opt out and then doing it anyway, or something else because you opted out. (Like the Spam mail that says "Click here to unsubscribe", then unsubscribes you and adds your email address to a dozen other lists.)

Shady might even be something that looks like a "bait and switch", like saying this is free, then saying "but only if you". Their agreement says you can opt out of the processor usage. (A good idea if you pay for your internet by bandwidth used, btw.)

just the two cents my nickel is worth.

[Cuppa]

Who reads the Eula? Yeah, no one does. And software companies know this full and well. There even exists a program to read Eulas for you, and look for dangerous language.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/eulalyzer.html
http://lifehacker.com/5336382/digsby...-to-make-money

Why not just use Pidgin instead? I use it for msn, and gtalk. Sure, adding gtalk wasn't exactly easy, but a quick google search fixed it (gotta choose a different setting). I also used it for aol a year or so ago, and I am going to try it with irc.

http://www.pidgin.im/

[ATP]

I have looked at what appears to be the 'Big 4' - however, they exist as either 'pure play' IM aggregate clients, or IM/VoiP.

Yet Digsby aggregates the 3 main groups: email, IM and social networks. I don't involve myself with any online social networks, mainly email and some IM. Pidgin isn't it for me then.

CNET has generally been favorably disposed to Digsby, noting w/ satisfaction Digsby's efforts to reduce resource usage by up to 75%, according to Digsby people.

I will have to try and sort out the severity or otherwise of one or two other issues raised by CNET or some of the users. Depending on how things go, I may end downloading Digsby and giving it a whirl.

[CynicalRyan]

I have stopped using Digsby. I wasn't much fazed with the tool bar installation (Sun's Java does that, too, much to my annoyance), or that they want to make money from their work in general.

What made me stop using it was that almost anything Disgby wanted to tell me seemed more important than what I was doing. And I hate, hate, hate focus-stealing application. Trouble with $IM login servers is way, way, way less interesting that what I am doing at the moment. It's bad enough that things steal focus, but it gets worse that, at least for new ICQ contacts, I can't even send the window in the background manually. *le sigh*

So, GTalk and Trillian (since the Basic version doesn't do Jabber) are it for now, and email is done via Thunderbird.

That being said: If you can live with a focus-stealing application (and it doesn't happen all that often, just often enough to annoy me, so YMMV), Digsby certainly is slick, and once the focus-stealing has been fixed, I'll install it again.