All Your IM are Belong to InstantBird

As a dedicated Trillian user for several years now I was hesitant to give another client a shot, but I gritted my teeth and did it anyhow. Instantbird is a new multi-protocol, cross platform, open source instant messenging client that makes use of Mozilla and Pidgin technologies to connect you to fourteen different IM protocols.

There are several other programs like this out there already, but I’ve yet to come across one that supports fourteen different networks. With social networking and communication via the web on the rise as it is, limiting choices to only the top few most popular services is no longer a good idea. Those looking for the ability to customize one’s many accounts, however, will have to wait a while longer or do it themselves. As it is only in version 0.1, Instantbird doesn’t really have any extensions or themes available yet. But as it is open source, anyone with the time and know how is free to give it a go. Right now, Instantbird is lean and basic in appearance, and the default sound effects are the least annoying I’ve encountered thus far.

Instantbird was developed by Florian Quèze and Quentin Castier; it currently supports the following protocols: AIM, Gadu-Gadu, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo, netsoul. So far, it’s not giving me anything Trillian can’t, but if you do a ton of textual talking online give it a try at instantbird.com.