Empathy

As of writing, the version I have here is Empathy 2.26.1 and it’s been pretty stable. It never gave me log in problems with YM. Also, it’s been easy to use because adding new contacts is easy as well as seeing those symbols for the contacts who are online, offline or away are very easy to remember and understand. Another lovely thing about Empathy is its ability to handle calls.

However, there are things that I still don’t like about it. (Maybe I just haven’t figured it out? I am not sure.) It’s bothersome how my buddies on Yahoo! Messenger invite me for a chat conference and yet I can’t seem to receive them. Even if they’ve sent the invites several times, I didn’t receive anything. Another issue I have is the support for Google Talk’s group chat feature. This time, I was able to receive the invite but I had to click the invite link and it opened the browser where the group chat was in another window. That was just too weird for me because I expected to chat with them on the message window. Why did I have to click a link when this is supposed to be the message window? Why chat from the browser? I don’t really know but my friend says it should be fine. I’d check with him later what his Empathy’s version is. And lastly, I don’t like the way that I have to have the buddy list window in focus before the CTRL-N shortcut for a new message will work.

Pidgin

I’ve been using GAIM/Pidgin for the longest time so I am probably biased when I say that I still prefer Pidgin. For one thing, the keyboard shortcuts are really nifty, especially when it comes to making new conversations with contacts. You don’t have to bother showing the buddy list. Another thing I love about that new conversation feature is that it could automatically retrieve the list of buddies you have with particular first how many letters that you type and you don’t even have to select which protocol to use. I don’t have to write the complete name and select whether the contact is in Yahoo or something else before I could choose. The important task is that I am able to select my contact.

What I don’t like about Pidgin though is that it is bothersome to use Yahoo Messenger on it from time to time. There are times I got login issues even before the latest change from Yahoo. Too bad that where I live, most of the locals are on Yahoo Messenger, not Google Talk or something else. Aside from that, it’s a heavy application and it can’t handle voice calls.

At the end of the day, I wish there’s a super application which could combine all the good things from these two applications. When that happens, I think I’d be using that more often already.

Post from: New Linux User

Centerim

Pros:

• CenterIM consumes barely 1% of my memory. I am running it on an Acer Aspire One 150Bb with 1GB of RAM.
• Several IM protocols are supported: Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, LiveJournal. It also has an RSS Reader.
• You can have several conversations at the same time.
• The screen shows the keyboard shortcuts that help you navigate through the application.
• By default, the sound is on so you could hear the ‘ping’ sound when you receive a message.

Cons:

It’s interesting actually. So if you’re looking for a way to chat while you’re on the command line and you don’t want to use an IRC client connecting to a Bitlbee server, then CenterIM is more of a good fit for your needs.

To learn more about CenterIM, here’s the CenterIM website.

Post from: New Linux User

What’s Twitgin?

Microblog-purple/Twitgin is a Pidgin plugin which allows you to post your tweets on twitter without having to log on the website. You just need to have Pidgin up and running and the plugin activated so that you could do that. You could also get updates on Pidgin. This basically works when you install a library for microblogging. I learned about the plugin from ainotenshi’s blog entry about turning Pidgin into an awesome microblogging client. I followed the instructions on how to install microblog-purple on another blog entry, though, because I am on Ubuntu. However, the main microblog-purple page different packages, depending on whether you’re using Adium, Pidgin or Pidgin on Windows.

For now, this works well for me. I might blog about Gwibber another day but for now, this would be my tool for following tweets so I don’t feel too overwhelmed by too many applications on my desktop.

Post from: New Linux User