I am sure many of you have used an instant messenger before. For the uninitiated, it is similar to a text message, but has fewer limitations. You can IM (instant message) from your data enabled phone (Android) or via the web.

The messages are all in one thread so they are easy to re-read if you get confused. You have an IM username if you have a web-based email like Gmail, Yahoo or MSN Live. If you have ended up with a handful of email accounts over the years, you likely will have friends you talk to on each IM service. Here are a bunch of good messaging apps to try. There are a few SMS apps in the list too. They will help improve the look of your SMS experience.

IMO

IMO is a pretty cool all in one messenger. We talked about the web-based IM app a while ago here on Make Tech Easier. The Android version is no slouch either. It is an all on one that does not require you to have yet another account to remember the login info for.

IMO offers a Myspace and a Skype option which not many IM services do. You can also store and access your chat history online at IMO.im from your desktop.

[feedomit][/feedomit]

Palringo

I used Palringo on my Blackberry a while back and it was great. It offered Facebook chat, which at that time, no other app had. It is much improved since then.

The unique services you can use are iChat, XMPP and Gadu-Gadu. Palringo is a bit blocky looking compared to the others, but does work well offering features such as Groups (group chats) as a way to meet new and interesting people.

eBuddy

eBuddy is a close second to IMO in my opinion. You get a very easy to use app with lots of popular choices for accounts. You will need to create an account like most of the others. The unique service is Hyves.

Go SMS Pro

Go SMS Pro is a made by the same people as my favorite launcher replacement app Go Launcher EX. The SMS replacement app offers a lot of the same features as the launcher. If you send a lot of text messages, you will like the threaded conversations, personal signature, backing up threads, being able to blacklist a number and a ton of themes to name a few cool features.

Go SMS Pro Facebook Chat Plugin

If you are using Go SMS Pro, you will find this one of the most useful plugins. Once you log in with your user name and password and grant access, you will be able to chat with friends on Facebook chat when they are logged in.

Handcent

This is another text messaging replacement application. Handcent was the first application I tried when troubleshooting a picture messaging problem I was having. It is a huge upgrade from the preinstalled and usually bland messaging applications on phones.

A feature that is fun to play with is getting Handcent to read your text messages. The default voice and speed can make for some pretty funny interpretations of the message. While Go SMS lets you back up your messages to your SD card, Handcent takes it one step farther and lets you backup and restore your messages in the cloud.

SMS popup

If you want to add some functionality to your preinstalled SMS app, SMS popup will give you a popup window showing the message. You can reply right from the popup window too. If you don’t want to get a notification window for everyone, you can customize the settings to accommodate that.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to spice up your messaging whether it be SMS or instant messengers They all have their benefits depending on how you use them and your preferred services.

What messaging applications do you use on your Android phone?

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Simkl is an application that will keep all of your chat histories stored in the clouds. This means you can access a chat from anywhere you have internet access, not just your local machine.

Something to download

Even though everything is stored in the clouds, there is still an application you need to download and run on your local machine. Simkl isn’t magic, it needs something on your machine to record your conversations.

What Simkl works with

Right now you can use a few different instant messaging services. Skype, Windows Live Messenger (WLM), ICQ, Yahoo and AIM can all have their chat histories recorded and stored online. You will also see you do not need to use the actual application. Simkl has been tested with apps like iChat, Pidgin, Digsby and many others.

Why use Simkl?

I asked myself this question when I looked at Simkl. For a freelancer or person who travels a lot for their job, having access to your chat history can save you a lot of headaches.

Imagine you are on the first day of your business trip and you get an email from a client asking the exact price of the quote you talked about via Skype chat. Instead of telling them you will need to get back to them in 4 days when you return, you can login to Simkl and look up your chat with that client.

What you can save

If you use any of the instant message services, you can save the chat logs. These histories will be saved for later reading on history.im. Saving your chat logs in the clouds is a fantastic feature for those of you who use multiple computers during the course of their work week. Using Simkl will combine your chat logs so you don’t need to remember which computer you were on when you talked to a certain person.

If you are using Skype or Windows Live Messenger, you also have the luxury of storing your voice chats as well. For those of you who conduct interviews through WLM, there really isn’t a good way to record your chats. If you use Skype, you will need to use a 3^rd party application to review the dialog.

Having access to the voice conversation recording is ideal if you want to go back later and transcribe the conversation.

What else Simkl does

Another feature of Simkl is saving your instant message contacts. This may not seem important because you can always just re-download the IM application and sign in again if your PC crashes. Well, what if your account gets hacked and you can’t access it?

If you are looking for a specific part of a conversation but don’t remember when it was, you can search through all of your logs for a specific bit of text. I don’t know about you, but I am a big IM user and it can be a huge pain to remember who you talked to about what. Searching for a phrase can be a monstrous time saver.

What are your must have instant messaging applications or add-ons?

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• Christmas Week Special: IM+ Pro For Android Free Giveaway

There are no lack of Instant Messaging apps in the Android market. A quick search will yield apps like eBuddy, Meebo, IMO, IMEasy etc. IM+ is yet another instant messaging app.

For those who are coming from iPhone, you will know that IM+ is one of the most popular IM app in the Apple App Store. It supports Twitter, push notification and many more features unique to other IM app. So how does the IM+ for Android stack up? Does it live up to its reputation? Can it stand out in the crowd? Let’s take a look.

Note: We are also having a free giveaway for the IM+ Pro app for Android. Read on for more details.

After installation, the first thing you need to do is to add your IM accounts. Networks supported by IM+ include MSN, Skype, Facebook, AOL, Gtalk, Yahoo, Jabber, ICQ and mySpace. Unlike the iPhone version, there is no Twitter support yet.

Once you have setup all your IM accounts, you will find all your contacts listed in a single window. An icon will show up beside each contact to identify the IM network he/she is from.

User Interface

I must admit, IM+ has a really nice user interface. In fact, it is the best among all IM apps. The contact list fills up the whole screen with no redundant borders on the side. In addition, the font size is big and the thumbnail pictures of your friends are clear.

Any incoming chat will be moved to the top of the window to make it easy to access. If the app is not active, you will also receive a notification at your status bar.

Chat Interface

During chat, the conversations are nicely arrange and are color-coded for easy recognition.

It also supports a good range of emoticons.

For MSN Live Messenger, you can even start a group chat. This is one feature not available in most IM apps.

The best feature I would say, is the ability to view and export your History log. As I traverse between different computers and mobile devices, I held conversations with different people at different times, on different terminals. In order to track the conversation, I have to sync my history logs so they appear on all the terminals that I am using. Most mobile IM app don’t have history log, let alone the ability to export them. With IM+, I can easily export the history log to my Dropbox account and access it from my desktop.

Other features

Set custom status

Some IM apps only come with “Online” and “Away” status, but IM+ comes with “Online”, “Away”, “I am here”, “Invisible”, “Offline”. Best still, you can create your custom status.

Create custom message template

I don’t use this often, but IM+ allows you to create custom message template that you can use at any time (for example, “I am busy now. Talk to you later”).

Wrapping up

Without a doubt, IM+ is the best Android IM app that I have ever tried. If you have not tried it, I urge you to download it now.

Free Giveaway

IM+ is available in the Android market in both the Free and Pro version. Both versions are essentially the same except that the free version is ad-supported.

We are glad to have Shape Services (the developer of IM+) to sponsor 5 license keys for the Pro version. Here is what you need to do to win the prize.

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter :

(If you have already done this, skip to step 2)

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: This free giveaway contest is now closed.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, or leave a comment below.

This giveaway begins now and ends Wednesday, 27th December at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

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Poll results and this week’s poll after the jump.

The question for this week’s poll is: What’s Your Favorite Instant Messaging Application?

Be it Windows, Linux or Mac, there bound to be an instant messaging application that you used frequently. The list below is not conclusive. If your favorite app is not in the list, do let us know in the comments.

Take Our Poll

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Frid.ge is a private social site offering a lot of what you are used to without the prying eyes of everyone who have friended or followed you everywhere else on the web. If you are familiar with any other micro blogging sites, Frid.ge most resembles Tumblr.

A little about Frid.ge

Frid.ge is invite only. If you are not looking to air all of your sharing and messages to the whole world, you found the right application. Organizations, businesses and clubs will greatly benefit from the social aspect coupled by privacy of Frid.ge.

Inviting others

Once you get the basic setup completed, you will need to invite others. The great part of using Frid.ge is it’s an invitation only site. If you want to make a forum to complain about work, you can invite everyone who has a beef with your employer. This can be done in a couple ways.

Like a lot of applications out there today, you can have your Gmail contact list scanned for people you may want to invite.

The other way is to send the potential participant an invitation link. This link is specific to your “fridge”.

What Frid.ge does

You create a post or update just like on many other sites. You can use text, a picture or video. When you post an update, you will see it in chronological order. If you are a business working on a project, this is great for keeping the group up-to-date.

More than one group

What I like is you can have more than one group. Each group has a different invite link. That means you can have several segmented groups with similar members in each group.

How to post

Posting can be done in a couple ways. While there isn’t a mobile application for your iPhone or Android, you can email in your post. Each person you invite to participate will have a unique email address to send updates to.

If you have a standard phone, you can send a SMS message to the email address and update while you are on the go.

Your wall

You have your own wall and it will show your recent posts, whereas “my fridge” will show everyone’s updates.

Update notifications

If you aren’t tied to your computer all day and therefore might not have the Frid.ge open all the time to see when new updates are available, you can get it to email you whenever a new update is posted.

Much like Facebook and Twitter, this can be a bit much if you have a lot of active users. I would recommend setting up a folder and a filter or rule to separate the emails you get or you may get overwhelmed.

How you might use Frid.ge

I could see a lot of potential uses for something like this. Right off the top of my head, I see people using this for collaborating on a project, planning an event, inter-company updates, client updates, club events, managers communicating to employees, editors to writers, apartment managers broadcasting information to renters, site owners communicating to loyal readers in place of a newsletter…

What are some uses you might have for a private social network?

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These problems have been alleviated by the new Android app TalkMyPhone.

TalkMyPhone works by having your phone connect to your instant messaging client. The IM client then displays your text messages and other information as though it was a conversation with any IM contact. The beauty of TalkMyPhone is that it also allows you to act on the information you receive, for example by replying to a message.

Download

Homepage | AppBrain | Market

Set-Up (Computer)

There are two ways of setting up TalkMyPhone. You can either add it to your IM client as a new contact or as yourself. I have chosen to add it as a new contact on my IM client of choice: Digsby.

Step One: Navigate to https://register.jabber.org/ and create a new Jabber account.

Step Two: Add the new Jabber account as a friend on your IM client. In my case my Jabber account was test123@jabber.org

Step Three: Make sure that your new contact appears in your IM client (it may appear offline).

Set-Up (Phone)

After you have downloaded and installed TalkMyPhone on your Android phone you will have to set it up to communicate with your newly created Jabber account and your IM client.

Step One: Launch the app and select TalkMyPhone Preferences.

Step Two: Input the relevant information.

• Address to notify: enter you standard Gmail address
• Use a different account: check the option
• Login: enter your newly created Jabber account (e.g. test123)
• Password: enter the password associated with your newly created Jabber account
• Under Additional settings enter the following:
  • Server host: jabber.org
  • Server port: 5222
  • Service name: jabber.org

Step Three: Choose notification options.

I use all the notification options save for the battery state changes as this overwhelms my IM client with notifications every few minutes!

Step Four: Select Start/Stop TalkMyPhone from the apps main page on your Android phone.

The app will connect with your new Jabber account and a message will be displayed on your IM client indicating that a connection has been established.

Usage

Once the app is set-up, you can issue any of the following commands from your IM client’s conversation window:

Examples:

Sending a message to a contact

Location

Conclusion

TalkMyPhone allows me to free myself from my phone and focus on my computer when I am at my desk. It is much easier to respond to messages using my IM client than my phone. Also, it is useful to be able to receive notifications through the IM client so I don’t have to keep looking over to my phone.

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Yuuguu give us a free and easy way to hold our very own spur of the moment web conference. In just a few minutes, you are ready to share your screen with anyone connected to the internet.

The Basics

Yuuguu installs like most other Windows programs; follow the steps in the installation setup wizard.  It is also available for Mac (10.4 and higher) and Linux.

What you will see in the Windows version is a window like many instant messengers have. Click on [No: I Want To Sign Up]

You will need to fill in your basic info to start up an account.

Once you are all signed up and confirmed, you should see a window like this:

Like many applications, you can search your email to find contacts. Yuuguu lets you link your Skype and other instant messaging accounts like AIM and Yahoo and a couple others. While Skype currently offers a screen sharing feature, most instant messaging services do not.

Linking with Skype

Linking your Yuuguu account with your Skype account only takes a few steps. Adding an instant messaging account is a little easier.

Once you choose Skype as the account you want to link to Yuuguu, you will need to grant Yuuguu access then click finish.

Using Sharing Your Screen

There are a couple ways to share your screen. The most obvious way is via Skype or instant messenger. When you send an offer for them to view your screen, this is what they see.

The other method is for people not in your contact list. You can share your screen with anyone who has a computer with a web browser and an internet connection.

In the main Yuuguu window, there is a button labeled [Web Share]. When you click it, a window will pop up displaying a link with an access PIN and a phone number and PIN to dial in to use audio if you choose.

What They See

When the guest viewer clicks on or copies and pastes the link into their browser, they are asked for their name and the PIN number for the one-on-one web conference.

Once logged in, there will be a chat window to the right. In the chat window you can type back and forth while they are watching you work on the live (slightly delayed) view of your screen.

Conclusion

The free account does have some limitations to get you to move to a paid plan.

• Usage is limited to 100 minutes a month with people without a Yuuguu account
• No more than 5 people session
• 2 users per domain

In the demos and Features description, they recommend using screen sharing for sales presentations and meetings. I am sure it would be an outstanding sales tool if you cough up the monthly subscription fee.

However, if you have a need for an impromptu webcast from time to time, this is a really great free app. In my tests, Yuuguu seems a little faster and is less of a resource hog than Skype’s screen sharing.

What other free software or apps are available to host a webinar of any size?

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For Ubuntu Karmic users who are using Empathy rather than Pidgin, some of you might have difficulties connecting to the FB Chat network. The most common seen problem is the Authentication Failed message. Here’s the fix:

Open your Empathy. Go to Edit -> Accounts.

In the new window, click Add.

Select Jabber in the dropdown field and check the box “Reuse an existing account“. (Do not select “Create a new account”. You will have authentication error later on)

Enter your Facebook login name and append @chat.facebook.com at the back as the Login ID. For example: damienoh@chat.facebook.com

Enter your Facebook login password.

Click Connect.

That’s it. You should be able to connect to Facebook Chat from Empathy now.

Note: If you have just created your Facebook username, you will need to log out and login again to your Facebook account before you can connect with Empathy.

For those who are connecting from other IM applications, you can easily add your Facebook chat with the following configuration:

Protocol: XMPP or Jabber
Username: your facebook username
Domain: chat.facebook.com
Jabber ID: your-facebook-username@chat.facebook.com
Password: your Facebook password

Advanced Settings

Port: 5222
Server: chat.facebook.com
Use SSL/TLS: no
Allow Plaintext Authentication: no

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• imo.im – A Multi-Client Web Based IM Service

This is where imo.im can help. Imo.im is a web based instant messaging application that lets you log into all of the major IM services including Skype and Facebook. Having access to some of these apps in an all-in-one web app is a damn good idea; I’m surprised these kind of web based apps aren’t more popular.

There are three ways to use this service:

1. Browser

If you are constantly at your computer with your browser open, you can opt to use imo.im from the site. It has no OS dependencies because it is web based. As long as you can access the web, you can IM until your heart is content.

2. Pop-out

If you prefer to, there is an option to IM via a pop out window. This option will still require you to have your browser open. Also, make sure the your pop up blocker lets it “pop out”.

3. Desktop App

The third option is a downloadable desktop application for Windows computers. Aside from not needing to have a browser running, there is no difference between the web and desktop version. Even though it is a downloaded application, it is pretty much just like the browser pop out.

Video

Depending on the IM service you choose to log into, you can access some of the features usually associated with their individual desktop application. For example, with Yahoo IM there is an option for video chat when I use the desktop app on my Mac. If I am using Adium, I lose this option. By logging onto the imo.im site, I  regain the use of video. If you are on a computer equipped with a webcam, you can use the video chat feature offered by some IM services. If you are out running errands and remember you have a 2:30 Skype video conference, you could pop into a Best Buy and use one of the demo computers. It would be really unprofessional of you, but you could do it if you had to.

Audio

The same is true with voice chat. Like webcams, most computers have a microphone of some kind or at the very least, an option to plug one in. If you are doing other things on the web and simply don’t want to type, you can utilize imo.im to speak your mind via services like Skype hands free.

Signing In

To make your signing in easier, imo.im lets you link the accounts you use the most together for ease of logging in. All this really does is allow one click sign in for all of the accounts you have linked.

Other Goodies – Picture Sharing

Imo.im has a photo sharing program. To share, simply email the photo to photos@imo.im from the email address you registered; that’s it. You have 2GB of space to store your photographic masterpieces.

Whiteboard

The whiteboard is a basic collaboration tool. It is almost like a collaborative Microsoft Paint. You can type, use the pre-made shapes and even doodle or write in the open area. I could see this being handy for an impromptu brainstorming session.

Overall, the basics of this web based service are pretty similar to many of the desktop apps available Adium, Trillium and Digsby. The biggest difference over the desktop counterparts is being able to access it from any computer with an internet connection. Great if you are traveling sans laptop and have to use the hotel lobby computer in a pinch.

What other web based IM services are available?

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So what is it exactly?

According to Google:

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Intriguing, but not very specific. Suffice it to say, each “Wave” is like an email thread or message board post. The difference is that you’re not just posting a series of replies (though you certainly can use it that way), you’re making changes to a single document. Each change becomes a branch of the original message. You can roll a wave back in time to see how the conversation has evolved. If you get added to a pre-existing wave, you get the whole thing – the document (or thread) as-is, along with its entire history. Waves can be embedded into blogs, so any time a change is made to that wave it can show up in something like Blogger in near real time. We’ll cover the most interesting Wave features in more detail as we go.

Using a Wave

The Wave exists online, and can be accessed a few different ways. The most common would probably be through a “Wave Client”, ie a GMail-like web app that displays your Waves in the browser window. Here is an example of the main wave.google.com

On the far left we’ve got a pretty familiar webmail style menu, with the usual Inbox, etc. Below that is your contacts. Wave seems to have imported my GMail contacts and added those who are also signed in here. The center pane shows your message history much like any email client, including the pic for each participant in the wave.

Things get more interesting when we get to the right pane. Here we can view, edit, and create waves. In this example, I wrote a Kurt Vonnegut quote to Crystal. She responded not by creating a separate reply, but by editing my original words. When I get back to Wave and see her message, Wave highlights the changes she has made.

This means you could use a single wave to have multiple people, say, write a paper for school or collaborate on a family Christmas list. All changes are essentially real time, each change creating a new branch with a complete backup history. In fact, Wave provides a playback feature that allows you to step through the document from creation to the present.

Extensions

Wave expects and encourages user-developed extensions. As it’s still in development, there aren’t many choices yet. The extensions that do exist are all fairly useful. First, you can perform a Google search and include the results in the wave. No real surprises there.

Next is the single-click Yes/No box. Of all the things to include in an early release I’m a little surprised the Yes/No box was one of them, but I suppose it demonstrates some of the things you can do with extensions.

The results were unanimous.

There is also a Maps extension, which is another single click surprise. I have to admit, this would make it a lot easier to exchange directions.

As I write this, a new wave just arrived in my inbox for the Google Wave Extension Gallery. I can browse and install new extensions from within the wave. Presumably the wave will be updated as new extensions come out.

Conclusion

There is FAR more to Google Wave than I could possibly cover here, and this is still a fairly early development version. For those who want all the details, you can find a LONG (80 minutes) video of the tech demo here. For something with so drastically different from email on the technical side, Wave manages to feel surprisingly comfortable. The technology is certainly impressive, and it’s easy to adjust to the Wave way of doing things once you’ve spent a few minutes using it. As for usefulness, that’s a little harder to judge. From what I’ve seen, Wave only works if everyone else is also using it. As great as the map feature may be, the recipient would of course need to be a Wave user as well. Not that this is a flaw in Wave exactly, but it does place a limit on how useful it can be. I think it’s got a lot of potential, and I’ll be keeping a Wave tab open for a while to see how things go, but I won’t go closing my webmail tab just yet.

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Zoho chat currently supports Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, Windows Live, ICQ and Jabber. Once you sign in to Zoho chat, you can easily add the corresponding IM accounts which you like to use and sign in to the respective IMs. There is also a setting for you to change your background picture according to your mood.

Features of Zoho chat

1. Chat with multiple logins of same client

Zoho chat allows you to login with two accounts of  a same IM client at the  same time, i.e. login to two Yahoo accounts or two Gmail account at the same time. To enable this option simply go to Chat Preferences, add the same IM client twice (or more) with different login credential.

2. Add live support and chat to your web page

Now, if you are selling a product or providing a services, you can add Zoho chat to your web page and have it acts as a live support for your customer. Once you have configured the widget, including the color and theme to suit your website design, just copy the javascript to the respective web page and your live support will be up in minutes.

3. Change background images to reflect your mood

Unlike other web app, you are not restricted to the same background in Zoho chat. You can pick a background picture from Zoho account or upload images or use your Flickr image. You can also make Zoho change the background picture on every login.

Conclusion

Zoho chat is a great online tool that is powerful in the backend and easy to use on the frontend. Features like live support, embedded chat enables us to add lively effect and interactivity to static pages. Zoho chat is also integrated with Zoho Mail and with give a notification whenever a new mail arrive.

Have you tried Zoho Chat? Share your experience with us in the comment.

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