Student's Outlet

Tired of opening lots of different chat clients? Try Pidgin.

Pidgin is a chat client program that used to be installed by default in Linux (now it is Empathy IM Client), or to be downloaded and installed in Mac or Windows. Pidgin lets you log in to different accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. Like Meebo (no installation needed, only a web browser is needed), this means that you can be chatting with friends on MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in a Yahoo chat room all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of these chat networks, such as file transfers, different status messages, buddy icons, custom smilies, and typing notifications. Numerous plugins also extend Pidgin’s functionality above and beyond the standard features. One feature I like the most about this chat client program is that logs or conversations you have with someone is automatically stored in your computer.

Pidgin is free and contains no ads. All Pidgin’s code is open source and licensed under the GNU General Public License. This means you can get Pidgin’s underlying code and modify it to suit your needs, as long as you publish the changes you make for everyone to benefit from as well.

This is also translated into many different languages. See this for list.

Now, Pidgin already has a Twitter plugin (Twitgin), a Tweeter Conversation, which lets you tweet and receive tweets from the users you are following using this chat client. Read this for the instruction on installing this Tweeter plugin. Also, this chat client already supports Facebook chat. All you need to do is download and install the debian file, if you are using Linux, or the executable file if you are using Windows.

Now, you could already chat with you friend on MSN, talk to friends on Google Talk, sit in a Yahoo chat room, tweet and receive tweets with Tweeter, and chat with online friends in Facebook, all at the same time.