June 12, 2001

10:53 AM

Attention ChatMonkeys.Are you addicted to chat programs? AIM? ICQ? Yahoo and MSN? Even have two instances of mIRC running? Now there's hope. You can have all of these running all at once using *just one program*. And it uses far less resources than all of those other programs put together. matter of fact, i think it uses less resources than icq itself (like that's hard). It's skinnable too! Score!

/me hands out the needles.
posted by jcterminal (20 comments total)

Also check out Jabber. It's available on a greater number of platforms [although I'm not sure what the current status is regarding IRC].
posted by jammer at 11:02 AM on June 12, 2001

This sounds great, but is there any hope that the big boys in the chat world won't start adjusting their protocols so that third party apps like Trillian can't piggyback on their networks? Remember the AOL and MSN battle?
posted by ericost at 11:06 AM on June 12, 2001

You beat me to the punch, ericost. I had to stop using Odigo when AOL started preventing access.

Why is Trillian any different?
posted by awcole72 at 11:13 AM on June 12, 2001

I use Imici for chatting purposes, and every time that AOL has done something to change their IM network so that Imici users cannot log on, there has been an Imici upgrade within 48-72 hours. It's a very responsive, small-footprint program that works quite nicely - though it doesn't do IRC.

I can't even imagine why you would want to have IRC and an instant messaging program running simultaneously. How many different text conversations can one person have at once - especially if they're doing other things at the same time?
posted by Dreama at 11:23 AM on June 12, 2001

I use Fire on OSX, it seems to work pretty darned okay.
posted by jessamyn at 11:28 AM on June 12, 2001

Maxxchat is another one that looks promising. Haven't used it tho.
posted by samsara at 11:33 AM on June 12, 2001

There's more than one way to skin a chat client!

Aaahhahahahahhaahaha! I kill me.
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:34 AM on June 12, 2001

My understanding of the situation is this. AOL has published a spec for an instant messaging protocol that connects to their network. If you use the published spec, you won't be blocked. Odigo (and older versions of Fire) had reverse-engineered the more sophisticated protocol used by AIM itself, and that's why they were blocked. As I understand it, the published protocol only allows instant messaging, not file transfers and voice chats and all the other things that AIM can do. It seems fair enough to me for AOL to restrict those features to its own client.
posted by kindall at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2001

I can't even imagine why you would want to have IRC and an instant messaging program running simultaneously. How many different text conversations can one person have at once - especially if they're doing other things at the same time?

The new generation gap can be pretty well illustrated by how you respond to Dreama's question. I like to focus on one or two things at a time. My friend's 14 year old daughter chats with multiple friends online while on the phone, with both her TV and stereo on. We tried quizzing her once to see if she had any retention of all the input, and we were blown away as she rattled off the plot of the show, the songs she had heard, and what all of her friends were up to. I've got to believe you lose something when you multitask that much, but that's how many kids operate these days.
posted by gimli at 12:41 PM on June 12, 2001

Hey jessamyn,

you got a url for that OS X chat program?
posted by Awol at 1:05 PM on June 12, 2001

I can't even imagine why you would want to have IRC and an instant messaging program running simultaneously.

It's also nice if you have 2 friends who use ICQ, another 4 who use AIM, a few on ICQ, etc., but you don't want to use a different client for each. I started using Trillian today and I dig it the most.
posted by RylandDotNet at 1:06 PM on June 12, 2001

Fire.app, the aforementioned Mac OS X chat program.
posted by kindall at 1:10 PM on June 12, 2001

Kinda defeats the purpose of multiple-clients for chat for me. I have different nics and the apps are different and that way it's much easier to remember who I am today.

I'll pass.
posted by Dagobert at 1:16 PM on June 12, 2001

Imici is pretty nice. Doesn't do IRC like Trillian, but it doesn't have about the worst interface I've ever tried like Trillian, either.

I've been thinking about just banning IM programs from my computer though, actually. I never seem to get much done once I get started in conversations.
posted by endquote at 2:13 PM on June 12, 2001

I do that too gimli, the thing is as you get older the amount of stuff you type in the wrong window goes up!
posted by DiplomaticImmunity at 2:15 PM on June 12, 2001

Gee, thanks gimli. Now I'm generation gapped.

I feel so old. So so old. Dammit, I can't reach my cane. (Really.)
posted by Dreama at 3:21 PM on June 12, 2001

How many different text conversations can one person have at once - especially if they're doing other things at the same time?

Doing other things? You mean, doing work? Hahahahhaahahahahhaha.....
posted by aki at 7:47 PM on June 12, 2001

To resolve jammer's query on Jabber: yes, Jabber had IRC support, and it works quite nicely.

And I'm so sick of the whole skinned application thing... can't we all just use themed widget sets and get it over with?
posted by Lionfire at 1:47 AM on June 13, 2001

I've talked to several different people at a time while reading e-mail, metafilter, or some other weblogs... my friend Lisa does that all the time, too. I'm downloading this program as we speak (gah dial up modem)
posted by dagnyscott at 6:46 AM on June 13, 2001

Trillian would rock if it actually came with a nice default Win32 interface so it looked like the rest of my applications. But no - it defaults to a skin, and even the "Win2K" skin doesn't do it right, it uses some godawful 6-8 point font that couldn't be changed easily.

I don't like giving up on software after only an hour, so I've "put Trillian aside for now" ;-)
posted by AdamJ at 7:38 AM on June 13, 2001