I succumbed to peer-group pressure and gave Adium a try; it’s a Mac instant-messaging client, wrapped around the Gaim code, that supports more or less every IM system on the planet. I’m very impressed, it’s good stuff. Gaim is very solid, and as for the OS X wrapping... well, iChat makes native AOL look klunky and primitive, and Adium makes iChat look sloppy and space-inefficient; it gets the job done and gets out of the way. Also, if you want to whisper secrets, it supports OTR encryption. I can’t push pictures through it or do video chat, so iChat will still get used sometimes. But, as of now, you can talk to me on AIM, Jabber, Yahoo!, and probably even MSN pretty soon. [Update: MSN too, tim dot bray at sun dot com (uh, do I know anyone on MSN?); I’m now superultramegaconnected.] Adium: highly recommended. [Update: There’s an irritating bug, Adium from time to time makes it look like I’ve dropped off AIM even though I’m still there. I’ll have to go poke around and see if the developers know about this.]
