Chat with me...

If you haven't noticed I added a new feature on my blog.. Over to the right in my "sidebar" you will see a little grey box titled "Chat with me". Until recently, I haven't used an instant messenger for quite some time, and I finally decided I wanted to get back into it again. I have used AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo!IM, ICQ, and MSN Messenger, and I have accounts and contacts on each of them, and in the past I used to keep all of them running at the same time... Then I found a software package called "Trillian" which is a single IM client that allows you to connect to all of the other services. It worked great at home, but I couldn't use it at work, because I am not allowed to install software at work. Since I spend a considerable amount of time at work, and most of my computer time at work, and very little time at home on the computer, I really didn't get to use the software much. When my computer needed to be reinstalled because I crashed the harddrive, I decided to not reinstall the chat software. A few weeks ago I heard about this software called "meeBo". I heard it was a IM client like Trillian, so out of curiosity led me to the site http://www.meebo.com/ to check it out. What I found was something better than Trillian. I found that it was indeed a single IM client that uses multiple services, but even better is that it is web based, and doesn't require software to be installed on my computer... WOW! That meant I could use the software ANYWHERE on any computer including at work (as long as they don't block the site). So I signed up for free, set everything up, and was very surpised to see works great! And to add the icing to the cake, it's not blocked at work! So now I am able to chat with all of my friends (I think I still have a few) on the various chat networks with my Internet Explorer window at work! I am very happy with meeBo, and I started poking around in the setup and I found something rather neat and unexpected. When I was going through the setup for the site there was this thing called "meebo me", and at first I didn't understand what that was. I spent a little time investigating, reading, and experimenting, and I found that "meebo me" allows me to embed a chat client on my website (blog) so people could chat with me right from my site! So being the techie geek, nerd that I am, I quickly added the client to my sidebar, and now you can see that when I am online, and can chat with me real time without needing to install a chat client or even sign up for any service! Cool huh? Later Lou