September 19th, 2004

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jimbojones
11:55 am - Public Service Announcement - GAIM goes v1.0.0
 

The open source Instant Messaging client I use, GAIM, went to version 1.0 this weekend. Going "one point oh" in an open source product is a much bigger milestone than it might sound like, because in the open source world, usually hundreds of thousands of people are using and relying on a product - and finding it better than the corporate equivalents - looooooong before its authors decide to take it out of "oh point something" versions. So anyway, I decided to take a break from playing Fable for long enough to make sure all you folks know about it, and encourage you to give it a shot if you haven't already. Not only is open source software good for the soul, in many cases, including this one, it's better! That's a miniaturized screenshot of one of GAIM's conversation windows on the upper right. Several features worth mentioning:

  • fully cross-platform - use the same program to do your IM'ing on Windows, Linux, BSD, other Unix, Mac, or whatever else you come across
  • supports multiple protocols - use the same program, with a single buddy list, to message buddies on AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, Jabber, Novell Groupwise, IRC... the list goes on and on
  • tabbed conversation windows - keep all of your conversations in the same window and just click tabs to switch between them
  • supports easy, hassle-free secure encryption with an optional plugin - note the "Tx: plain Rx: plain" buttons in the screenshot - those indicate / select secure vs. plain text
  • incredible conversation logging, organized by buddy and by date and time - see bottom mini-screenshot
  • never any worries about spyware or ads or demands for registration or any other crap - it's open source!

You can download GAIM itself here, and if you're interested in the encryption plugin (and you SHOULD be, unless you're comfortable with the idea of bored law enforcement types sniffing your conversations for "interesting" keywords - which you SHOULDN'T be), you can find it here. You may also want to take a look in general at the available-but-not-bundled plugins; in particular I do use the "Extended Preferences" plugin as well as the aforementioned encryption plugin.
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Current Mood: propagandical
Current Music: Fable background music

(9 comments | Leave a comment)

Comments:


 
[User Picture] From: sanguine37
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 11:38 am		  (Link)
Mac? Really?


 
[User Picture] From: jimbojones
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 11:44 am		  (Link)
No foolin', sweet pea. As long as you're running OS X, at any rate; although you may or may not need to compile it for yourself, and it uses X11 instead of Cocoa for the GUI.

You might consider investigating AdiumX instead, though; it's the gaim library but using a different front-end so that you can run it in the standard OS X GUI instead of having to use xterm to run it as an X11 app.


 
[User Picture] From: sanguine37
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 11:52 am		  (Link)
I've been using Adium for years now. I lub it.


 
[User Picture] From: discogravy
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 12:38 pm		  (Link)
Cocoa is not the OS X gui, Aqua is. Cocoa's the engine that makes the OS go vroom vroom vroom (OS X == Darwin + Cocoa + Aqua)


 
From: inthrees
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 11:56 am		  (Link)

What, really?

OMG, they have computers on the Macintosh now?


 
From: (Anonymous)
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 12:14 pm		  (Link)

(this is dlack)

Jimbo, do you know if there's a way to configure the background colors, etc. in Gaim? Specifically, I'd like to use the same program for IRC and AIM, but I like my IRC window to be black background with light text. I was trying Gaim the other day, and could find nothing on doing this.


 
[User Picture] From: discogravy
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 12:40 pm		  (Link)

Re: (this is dlack)

i'm more interseted in getting file sending to fucking work on GAIM.


 
From: (Anonymous)
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 12:55 pm		  (Link)

still dlack

Hm, if file sending doesn't work, I'd be interested in hearing about that as well.


 
[User Picture] From: jimbojones
Date: September 19th, 2004 - 01:22 pm		  (Link)

Re: (this is dlack)

The AIM protocol itself is totally fucking half-ass when it comes to file sending. I never use that piece of shit; even when I forward the ports through the firewall it gets at best about a 50% track record (with the AIM client itself, mind you) and tends to be slower than dogshit.

If I have to send a file, I do it like a real man - I dump it on in an Apache-served directory and send a link. =)


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