Sunday, 23 November 2003
AIM consolidation
AOL has finally implemented multiple simultaneous sign-ons to the same AIM screen name. As of today, I have no more use for njriley@mac.com (previously used on my PowerBook) and njrwireless (previously used on my hiptop): I use njriley everywhere. This not only makes it easier for other people to contact me via AIM, it means I’m more likely to get your messages. Half the time my hiptop is sitting somewhere I’m not, or I can’t hear it or feel it vibrate when I’m wearing headphones. Someone IMs me, then gets frustrated that I don’t respond when I appear to be around.
A bonus is that it’s a lot more convenient not using iChat all the time if you want to carry on audio and video chats. I hope to see some type of iChat-on-demand make its way into the third-party AIM clients for the Mac, so it’s possible to start AV chats from a contextual menu or similar mechanism.
I also looked at the popular third-party AIM clients for the Mac. Adium 2 seems wonderful except for its lack of Address Book integration and a few user interface nits; Proteus seems to have fallen behind, as it seems quite flaky, and I can’t get its Address Book integration to do anything. Proteus also maintains its own buddy lists separate from those stored on the service, which I’d have to manually sync between my desktop and laptop Macs, and copy separately to my hiptop…not worth it. Fire I haven’t tried in ages; it used to be very unstable.
So until I can see people’s names instead of their nicknames in other clients with a minimum of setup, I’m sticking with iChat.
12:09 AM
