While in the middle of one of the worst moves I’ve ever experienced, and I move around a lot so there have been far too many of them, I ran across a great new instant messaging (IM) client. It’s called Digsby, and is another attempt at creating a multi-protocol IM client. I decided to post about it after reading this thread on the oDesk Community.
For those who don’t want to follow the link, the gist of the thread is that some people don’t like oDesk’s stated preference for Yahoo! Messenger over other instant messaging services. Instant messaging has become as ubiquitous as email: everyone uses it.
As a freelancer I find it’s great to use for quick points of clarification. The problem is that I normally have contacts on MSN, Yahoo! and GoogleTalk, and even with dual monitors three buddy lists take up a fair bit of real estate on my screen. If you’re like me, you’re in the same boat. Some people you talk to in one client, some in another. Some people you may have on multiple buddy lists, others only on one. If I load up all my messengers I have one person who appears seven times!
It’s a mess.
Digsby helps sort that out.
Features:
When it comes to IM, it has two main features that I love. The first is multi-protocol support, I love having only one client open. The second, and I think much cooler one, is support for merged contacts.
In most multi-protocol clients, if you have one person with seven accounts on your various buddy lists, they use up seven slots– which can make the list unwieldy. With Digsby’s merged contacts feature, you can put each person under a single Alias, so those multiple contacts don’t over-fill your list.
It’s my favorite IM innovation since they started releasing multi-protocol messengers.
Digsby also supports email monitoring.
It’s not quite the same as a full email client, but it’s a lot more than most IM clients will give you. I can use it to monitor one Hotmail, one Yahoo!, and two Gmail accounts simultaneously. Not only does it tell you how many emails you have in each account, but it also lets you take a message and delete it, mark it read, or report it as spam. It won’t let you read the email, but it does enough on the side to help manage those accounts, especially if you have multiple webmail accounts.
It also supports monitoring both Facebook and MySpace, but as I’ve managed to stay free of those two sites, I’m not going to go into detail. I also don’t think that these social networks are as important to freelancing as the IM and email functionality.
Okay, now that we’ve had a look at what it offers, let’s see what it’s like to use.
The Experience:
Disclaimer: Digsby is still in beta, so I’m going to give them a bit of a pass on some stability features as they are not necessarily going to be reflected in the final product.
The set up routine is generally straight forward, you’re prompted to log in (Digsby has its own login and password) and then set up the various IM and Webmail accounts you want to use it with. It’s all very simple and you have a dropdown to pick which accounts you want to use with Digsby. It supports MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Gtalk, ICQ and Jabber.
Contacts can be grouped with a simple drag and drop, and as usual you open a chat window by double-clicking on the name. The chat window’s essentially similar to those of almost any other client, and it saves history from session to session by default. If you’re chatting with several people it defaults to a single tabbed window, and you can move to separate windows simply by dragging the tab.
It’s simple and intuitive.
Being beta software, it does have some issues, though I’m sure they’ll be mostly worked out before the public beta. The biggest one is that MSN messenger support is still quirky. I’m seeing delays on messages and also sometimes the other person never gets the message. Most of these problems seem to occur when you try to initiate a conversation with someone over MSN, I seem to be able to receive messages just fine.
I also had an issue recently where the program refused to start. I just downloaded it again, installed it over the existing install and it was back up in moments. It even kept the visual style I’d selected.
The email functionality works exactly as described, and I’ve never had a problem with it. Even when I have to run MSN messenger along with it I still use Digsby to manage my Hotmail inbox.
Evaluation:
Given that if you’ve read this far, you probably want an evaluation I think I’d better give you one. Digsby’s not quite ready for prime-time yet. They have an excellent support staff and bug-reporting tools built right into the client, but part of being in beta is chasing down all the bugs.
Right now the MSN bugs in particular mean that I can’t stop using other messengers and rely solely on Digsby. That’s a pity, because if I could, I’d do just that.
Once it comes out of beta I recommend looking into it, especially if you have a decade’s worth of contacts on half a dozen messengers to keep up with. Even in beta it’s the best multi-protocol client I’ve tried.
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Hello, nice review here and I haven’t hear about Digsby before.
But have you tried Pidgin (http://pidgin.im) ? I thought this is kind of the de-facto standard for multi-protocol IM client (it was called Gaim previously), or you can also use Miranda or Trillian.
I used to use Pidgin when it was still called GAIM, as well as Trillian, and while I liked them, the versions I used did not work as well for my needs as Digsby does. My partner uses Trillian on her main machine and it doesn’t give her the flexibility that I get with Digsby.
One multi-client I used was called Easy Messenger, which I don’t think is still supported. It was nice because it had a tiny footprint but in today’s environment that’s not quite as important.
Dave, nice tip. I’ve been looking for something that just answers my communication needs and doesn’t try to sell me on some crappy multi-media, hydra-headed, Disney World experience, clown college programmed,…. ah, hell; I lost my train of thought.
I just want to send short, terse messages without flair and flash. Anyhow, thanks.
Thank you so much for the tip on Digsby. I have just read the site, and the Public Beta is now out and has addressed the problems you outlined. As a newbie “freeler”, I am voraciously reading all the information I can find to make things easier. Your blog has been an invaluable source, especially in navigating oDesk. I have just signed up and will begin taking the tests. Thank You for the handholding! Beverly of KIFCO and Subs.