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For a lot of people, instant messaging is a vital link to their social sphere. So what do you do if you’re away from home and need to chat? You could quickly download a program like Pidgin, or even carry it with you at all times, but there’s an even easier option: Meebo.
Meebo is a web client which allows you to log into all your IM accounts from anywhere. It supports all the popular services, including AOL, MSN, ICQ and others. You can use it without any signup, by simply entering your username and password for a service into the login page, or you can create an account, which allows you to automatically sign in to all the services you use at once.
When you log into a service using Meebo, you’re shown a page with simulated buddy list. When you send or receive messages, new windows spawn in the same browser tab. Each of the simulated windows has a button to pop them out into a real window (although you may have to tell your popup blocker to let Meebo do this) and the whole client feels very slick and very responsive. Pretty much every service you would find in the normal IM client, including audio and video chatting is available in Meebo. Also, you can set up public or private chat rooms to talk with other Meebo users.
The only real downside of using a client like Meebo is that it can’t pop a window up or flash the taskbar when you get a message, meaning you might miss them if you’re busy. It can play a noise, though, which helps quite a bit. If you think you can live with that one shortcoming, give Meebo a try; it might just replace your old-fashioned IM client.
Comments are closed on this article
shortbus88
February 04, 2009 at 12:08pm
We are talking about music, pictures, social networking.
Stuff for personal use.
It is a no brainer that corporations should not be storing sensitive data in the cloud.Class group projects could benefit from cloud computing just for convenience. I would also save a copy of the data on my own harddrive to backups, but save the changes in the cloud for the rest of my class project team to see as well.
i think that cloud computing has its place for data that you would not care if others could see it.
WildmanCAL
February 04, 2009 at 7:10am
If a person relies solely on cloud computing, then they are asking for big trouble if they lose their internet connection. Most broadband connections are fairly reliable these days but there is always that "I need to work on my school paper" and BAM! your internet connection is down and you cannot access your documents because they are stored on SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTERS! Thank you, no, but I will take storing on MY hard drive and it be MY responsibilty to backup MY data.
Keith E. Whisman
February 03, 2009 at 1:37pm
I think this is a big mistake for companies. With a third party holding a companies information it's going to be easy for companies to secretly sell it's customers data to rivals and hackers to break in and steal information. I don't like it one bit and It's a terrible idea for companies to rely on cloud computing entirely. Perhaps for receptionists at doctors offices and maybe market research companies for it's mass call centers. But to store information on a third parties servers it's a mistake. I can't believe people are so excited about this technology. It's definately not a technology enthusiasts like us here enjoying MaximumPC could possibly get excited about.
I Jedi
February 03, 2009 at 2:20pm
Agreed. I will never put private and sensitive information of mine on cloud computing. Too dangerous. I'd have to see some hard core reviews/statistics. etc to prove to me that this technology is safe, reliable, and without worry.
