<p>I wanted to let you all know about a really nifty chat program for keeping in touch with family and friends. I’m finding it really handy for keeping in touch with my children who are off at college. The program is pidgin and it is a universal chat client. It pulls all your chat accounts into one screen and you can chat on several programs at the same time. It’s the Windows/Linux equivalent of Adium for Macs. The initial download supports:
* AIM
* Bonjour
* Gadu-Gadu
* Google Talk
* Groupwise
* ICQ
* IRC
* MSN
* MySpaceIM
* QQ
* SILC
* SIMPLE
* Sametime
* XMPP (gmail chat)
* Yahoo!
* Zephyr</p>
<p>There is a separate plug-in for Facebook chat and I have installed it. Everybody thinks I am on Facebook all the time, but I’m not~~~~~I’m just logged into the chat. Currently I have friends and family on ICQ, MSN, AOL AIM, Google chat and Facebook chat. I see there are plugins for Twitter and Skype but I haven’t used those yet.</p>
<p>After you download the program you go in and enter all your chat user names and passwords. Under the Tools tab you can see the standard plugins that download with the program and you have to go in and activate the ones you want. I have activated buddy state notification (when a buddy goes away or returns), the new release notification (periodically checks for new releases) and the Windows pidgin options (activated the ‘start Pidgin on Windows startup’ option). You can set up buddy pounces if you have some chat buddies who are hard to catch (one of my kids is on and off quickly and that feature is nice when I have something I really need to tell him—or I’ll leave a message for him and he gets my message when he logs on and fires off a quick response) or they are people you especially like/need to talk to. (my best friend) </p>
<p>Here’s the link to the download and how the program works.
[About</a> Pidgin, the universal chat client](<a href=“http://pidgin.im/about/]About”>About)</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the 3rd party plugins you can get. The only one I’ve installed is Facebook chat.
[ThirdPartyPlugins</a> ? Pidgin ? Trac](<a href=“http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/ThirdPartyPlugins]ThirdPartyPlugins”>http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/ThirdPartyPlugins)</p>
<p>This is one of my favorite programs ever. My oldest college boy told me about it. He doesn’t like to talk on the phone and texting/emails are ‘iffy’ with him also. We’ve stumbled into Instant Messaging as our way to keep in touch and touch base once or twice a week. Obviously I don’t jump into the chat window most of the times I see him log on. I keep my pidgin chat buddy list constantly up in a small corner of my laptop screen. </p>
<p>I hope some of you will find this information useful. It’s like night and day comparing the communications I have with my oldest now versus when he went off to college 3 years ago (many states away). Now kid #2 is a different story…multiple texts per day, some Facebook and Instant Messaging also…he’s been gone 3 weeks and I haven’t hardly even missed him because he communicates so much! :-)</p>
<p>Leslie</p>