Meebo
Have you tried meebo.com? It is a website where you can log on to all of your instant messaging accounts in one place, with any software installation necessary! It not only gets the job done, it does so with ease and in style.
I often log on to IM services (usually with AOL and Yahoo). I don’t use the native software for any of them. I don’t need to, but keep in mind that in order to do some advanced features, you may need to use the actual native programs. Ads, feature bloat, and memory hogging are the mean reasons why I don’t download a one of them. I usually use an all-in-one chat program, such as Trillian (Win), Adium (Mac), and Gaim (now called Pidgin), which lets me log on to most any network there is today. But you really don’t need to install any of these programs. You can chat with all of your buddies on any service via Meebo. I used it exclusively when I first bought my Mac. I found that I really didn’t need anything more.
It has all the features you need and it works fantastically. You’ll soon forget you are using a website at all. You can sign on to any single chat service outright, but if you use more than one, I recommend creating a Meebo username so you can store all of your accounts under one roof. That way you need only sign on to their site with a single username and password.
I hear they have a sweet new mobile version of the site as well, for phone users. I have no interest in that, but if you want to sign on to your account from anyone’s computer, or your own at home without all the feature bloat, try Meebo. You won’t be disappointed. It finally does for instant messaging what webmail has done for email. All of your friends and contacts are automatically pulled from the server for each service, so absolutely no effort is required. Let’s hope this service is around for years to come.
