One of the sweet new features in GMail is the integration of AIM into GMail Chat. This means that in addition to all my GMail contacts, I can use the web interface in GMail Chat to talk to my AIM contacts as well (and likely have it all in one window in iChat - I'll see when I get home today).
This is significant to me because I've been trying to find an easy and likable solution to having one program that allows me to communicate with both sets of contacts. This is because of the large numbers of programs I have open at any given time on my desktop at work. I don't want to crowd the system tray, and I don't want to drink too much RAM when more critical processes are running.
Most of my coworkers use Trillian - it's sanctioned by our IT department, and people generally just use their AIM account to communicate intra-office. There's a problem with this, however - Trillian only supports Jabber accounts (like GMail Chat) using a plugin. This plugin only works when you pay for the premium version of Trillian.
I tried Pidgin - the nice open-sourced chat client, but I ran into two problems. 1) Likely because of my company network, one day my connection to AIM was killed. I could only connect to the Jabber server. That's useless, because I have Firefox open all the time anyway, and why open another program just for Jabber when I could just open a new tab in an already-running window? 2) Shortly after the AIM connection failed, my stupid corporate install of McAfee decided that Pidgin was a threat to my computer and quarantined a critical file.
Now I finally have a solution that doesn't require me to open any separate applications, yet still keeps me connected to my office mates and friends in the outside world. GMail pretty much rocks right now.
This is significant to me because I've been trying to find an easy and likable solution to having one program that allows me to communicate with both sets of contacts. This is because of the large numbers of programs I have open at any given time on my desktop at work. I don't want to crowd the system tray, and I don't want to drink too much RAM when more critical processes are running.
Most of my coworkers use Trillian - it's sanctioned by our IT department, and people generally just use their AIM account to communicate intra-office. There's a problem with this, however - Trillian only supports Jabber accounts (like GMail Chat) using a plugin. This plugin only works when you pay for the premium version of Trillian.
I tried Pidgin - the nice open-sourced chat client, but I ran into two problems. 1) Likely because of my company network, one day my connection to AIM was killed. I could only connect to the Jabber server. That's useless, because I have Firefox open all the time anyway, and why open another program just for Jabber when I could just open a new tab in an already-running window? 2) Shortly after the AIM connection failed, my stupid corporate install of McAfee decided that Pidgin was a threat to my computer and quarantined a critical file.
Now I finally have a solution that doesn't require me to open any separate applications, yet still keeps me connected to my office mates and friends in the outside world. GMail pretty much rocks right now.