So, now that I’ve gotten used to my Mac and love the tools I’m using I find Digsby.

• One combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts.
• Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby.
• Stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace account (other network support coming soon).
• Customize digsby with application skins to give it a personal look and feel.
• Digsby offers complete synchronization between computers and installations. Everything from the skin you chose to your pre-defined status messages follows you from place to place.

Is anyone else using this instead of Adium? Or is anyone using this at all? What do you think?

Since taking the job with LibLime I’ve been using Twitter a lot more - it’s just another buddy on my already open IM client. Today, I thought I’d play with Tweet Clouds. Check out the cloud of terms I use in my tweets.

Technorati Tags: twitter

I was talking to my sister the other day and I asked her if she was on IM during the day. She replied with “IM is so yesterday!” I was a bit taken aback and thought - how can that be? I asked her “Okay, what is today then?” She answered “I don’t know - text messaging?”

I use it all day every day to keep in touch with my colleagues and even my other sister. But then I thought about it. My other sister isn’t actually on IM she’s on her cell phone and I’m sending her IMs that way. Also - after watching TV commercials during the news this AM I realized that many services are offering text messaging services.

So my question is what service is the right one? Should we stop pushing IM services and skip right to text messaging (SMS) services? Nikki at Jenkins Law Library writes that she was happy with an IM service offered by a book publisher, but my sister (who is not much younger than I am) is telling me that IM is “so yesterday”…

I don’t really have an answer, I’m just wondering what some of you in public or academic libraries have experienced with your younger audiences … actually … what are we experiencing with all of our patrons? I know that my mother prefers IM to text messaging, but that doesn’t stop her from using either service. What have you experienced?

[update] I should mention here that I prefer IM over text because I do not have a keyboard on my phone … also I don’t pay my provider the fees for unlimited texting so each message costs me $.10 … making it less appealing than IM. [/update]

I know I’ve said in the past that I’m no fan of Twitter - but I’m giving it another go. I’m trying to use it via IM now. So far this is going pretty well. With my new job I have to be online all day - and on IM & Skype & IRC, so using Twitter via IM just fits right into my regular daily workflow. I’m not sure how much I’ll be updating my status - but it’s nice when I’m at a conference (like this week) to update others on what I’m learning.

We’ll see how it goes - but no one can say I didn’t give Twitter a fair shot

Technorati Tags: twitter, micro-blogging

SpeakLike seems like it would be a useful tool for libraries providing IM chat services.

SpeakLike works by using a combination of machine and human translation. As you send a message, a machine will automatically translate it to another language, while a human translator looks things over to make sure the translation is accurate.

Found via DownloadSquad.

Technorati Tags: im, instant messaging, speaklike

Today I had my first Skype call/interview. It was an interesting experience. It was for a podcast that will appear on Talking with Talis once I’ve started my new job. One big tip - find a place without distractions or dogs!! My house has an open floor plan and it’s freezing out today so my pups were indoors and decided to play with each other while I was on the call (something they almost never do).

As for Skype - what a great tool! You can use it to voice or text chat. You can also use it for playing games (like on Meebo) and other things I haven’t figured out yet It’s free to download and install - so you have nothing to lose by trying it out.

If you’re interested my Skype username is the same as all my others “nengard”

Technorati Tags: skype, podcast, talis

What an amazing idea! David Lee King posts about an addition to his library catalog. When patrons can’t find what they’re searching for they’re prompted with a meebo chat box to ask a librarian for help! Check out the picture on Flickr.

Thanks Paul for pointing out that you can run Meebo as a Firefox sidebar. Neat!

I just read about IMified over at SolutionWatch.

From IMified:

Imified is an instant messenger buddy that works accross all major IM networks and offers access to a growing number of web applications, as well as productivity tools like notes, reminders, and todo’s. Imified helps you get things done faster.

From SolutionWatch:

Looking for an easy way to boost your productivity? Then turn on your instant messenger and head on over to IMified, a new service that enables users to access services like Basecamp, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk from an instant messaging client. Now, I know that instant messaging can be a huge productivity killer, but you're going to want to turn that client back on for this. With IMified, users can manage todo lists, save notes, create reminders, and even add milestones to a Basecamp project. Just send an instant message to IMified and you're good to go.

Sounds pretty darn handy - now I just need to find some time to play - maybe I’ll use it to add assignment due dates to my Google Calendar …. hmmmm … I’ll let you know how it goes.

Via Lifehacker:

A new study from Computer Standards and Interfaces seems to indicate that for collaborative, non-face to face tasks, we do much better communicating via IM rather than email:

“On average, the IM teams produced one more idea than those using email. The researchers suggests this may be due to the speed of IM compare to email.”

Obviously, face to face interactions are probably best, but the findings are interesting nonetheless. How about you - what’s your preferred smartmaking communicative technology of choice? Thoughts in the comments.

Is IM better for brainstorming? [NewScientist.com]

There is a nice little post over at the Meeblog about librarians’ use of Meebo and Meebo Me.

Turns out that locked-down computers, reference librarians who always want to be in touch with their patrons, and the desire to make libraries fun and friendly have given meebo and meebo me the perfect opportunity to shine.

I actually had the opportunity to recommend Meebo for use in a night school class - since the school computers were so locked down, it was the only way to teach community members about IM. Keep up the good work!

I just finished my first conversation with a reference staff member at Drexel via IM! I needed to find a required journal and was thrown off by the interface they provided me with. I went right to my comfort zone - InfoTrac because that’s what we have at work and I know how to use it - but turns out that even though it said my journal was in there - it wasn’t! So I opened up IM and asked the librarian. Now that I think back I guess a complaint would be that he/she didn’t provide a name so I can’t tell you who helped me - for now we’re going to assume it was a “she” - based on statistics.

Anyway, she walked me through each step in the process and when I hit a bump she came up with a way to help me. She also introduced me to ProQuest which is way prettier than InfoTrac! I found both of my journal articles and am ready to sit down and do some reading.

IM Reference is totally handy!! I love it!

I worked from home on Monday and had IM open so I could talk to my teammate (who was in the office). I used to be an IM junky when I was in college - but that died down pretty quick once I got a “real” job

Anyway, while I was on IM I got a chance to talk to Meredith who I haven’t talked to since March! So I thought I should try to keep my IM open whenever possible. If you want to chat my Yahoo and AIM IDs are the same “nengard”. I’m using Trillian so you can log in to whichever one you like. Hope to talk to you soon!

The folks at Meebo are offering a widget you can add to any webpage (requires flash) called meebo me.

meebo me is designed for anyone with a home on the web. If you’ve got a web page where you’d like to communicate with your visitors, meebo me allows you to see the people who are visiting your web page and chat with them!