Multiple Instant Messenger Service by:Chris Holgate

Formally known as Gaim, the open-source instant messaging program Pidgin allows the

simultaneous use of multiple IM services throgh a single application.

Available as a free of charge download from www.pidgin.im, this small program supports 17 networks including favourites AOL, MSN and Yahoo as well some lesser known ones such as Jabber and Gadu-Gadu. Additional chat clients such as Skype and the Facebook Chat tool can be added through the use of freely available third party plugins which are easily located on the Pidgin site.

Once installed, simply select the type of account you want to add (for example a Google Talk account) along with your user name and password. Any of your contacts from that account that are presently online will appear automatically in the buddies list and you can begin chatting straight away. Not only does this offer the distinct advantage that you don't need to switch between several applications if you have contact with friends on multiple networks but it also cuts down on the resource requirements of having multiple chat services running on one machine.

Along with being cross compatible with different networks, the Pidgin application is also available for many different Operating Systems; as well as the standard Windows version that you would come to expect, support has been provided by the developers for Linux, UNIX, bizarrely AmigaOS, Solaris, SkyOS and Qtopia.

All the standard features you would come to expect such as contact organiser, custom smileys, file transfers and group chats are present. The only real criticism that I would have of Pidgin is that it doesn't support voice and video chat. I hope this lack of functionality will be address in coming releases.

Pidgin is completely customisable; the preferences dialog box provides an area where you can define every conceivable option including the interface, sounds, network connection, chat logging and your default availability status. In terms of appearance you can also change the font type, size and colour, formatting along with installing new themes which change the appearance of smileys and status icons. An additional option to install themes in order to change the actual user interface would be welcome as the default interface may be a little dull and unintuitive for some users.

About the author

Chris Holgate writes a weekly article of all things technology related along with working as copyrighter for the inkjet and toner sales site Refresh Cartridges http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk

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