I know it’s been probably over a year since I did a Free Toolsday post, but I want to get them going again.  So if you know of any good free tools to share, let me know and I’ll review them!

This week I’m going to review an application I use daily.  I was a big user of Trillian for a long time in an effort to effectively manage all the different Instant Messenger programs I have friends on.  Digsby goes one step forward and not only allows you to connect to multiple accounts on MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, and Google Talk, but you can also connect to Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter.

I use this to effectively manage the fact that I have friends, colleagues, and coworkers that all use different instant messaging platforms to connect.  It saves system resources to run one application instead of 4, and is just more convenient.  I do see the basic emoticons, but sometimes I miss the more advanced features of some of the various messengers.  The one thing I wish Digsby would add is IRC support.  I was able to open an mIRC chatroom I used to frequent in Trillian, but Digsby does not have that feature.

The social network features work for statuses, not all the features of Facebook, MySpace, etc.  It does work like a basic Twitter client, but is a little clunky.  I mainly use it to tweet on the fly and check statuses, but I do still mostly just use TweetDeck for my heavy twittering.  Best of all, as you can imagine considering I’m posting this on Free Toolsday, it’s a free application.  So you can streamline your instant messaging at no cost.

You can download it here. (Download link has been fixed!)

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Whoever said that hanging around social media platforms never helped anyone is flat out lying. I’d like to think of myself as ahead of the curve in most situations. I try to be an early adopter whenever I can now. So I’ve been eager to jump onto the bandwagon with new social platforms like Social Thing and Britekite, most recently. I’m making a point to be a presence in the social media space for two reasons:

1. Fun.
2. Traffic.

I am geekier than I care to admit most times, and I’ve always been into instant digital communication like email and instant messenger. Which is why I acclimated to Twitter so easily. Making the jump from LiveJournal to MySpace, then later to Facebook was a piece of cake. So I have a lot of fun hanging around talking to people, exchanging ideas, or just exchanging rather meaningless comments. I’m just an online oriented person. Not that I can’t carry on a phone call or face-to-face conversation, I just enjoy the technical aspects of writing. Blame it on the geek in me.

But as I mentioned, the other more beneficial reason for hanging about on these networks has been traffic to my blog here. I’ve always known that my efforts and time spent on Digg and Stumble Upon would eventually pay off. At the same time, I was never worried about whether they would or not since it was the fun that kept me there. Today I decided to check my Analytics account, something I don’t do nearly as often as I should. I found a wonderful sight.

That’s right… my top 5 traffic sources include three social networks. This makes me totally happy that my addiction to these things is paying off. So listen to all of us social media nerds and register your brand names and participate. It’s just one of the many ways that you can make fun your job

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Hi, you’ve reached my blog. I’m not here right now; I’m at the dentist getting my teeth checked diligently. I haven’t left you with nothing… you get today’s free tool!

A great tool that I’ve been using for years is Trillian. My first computer was a Compaq laptop with an 8 gigabyte hard drive (this was less than 10 years ago – scary) and the more stuff I saved to my hard drive and programs installed the less everything ran smoothly. So I happened across Trillian – a great all-in-one program that allows you to run AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and Google Talk/Jabber. You can also run IRC chat rooms through it.

The free service is great. It allows for everything except advanced Audio & Video capabilities. There is a pro version that’s $25, which is a decent price for as much as I use it. My only beef with it is that the A/V engine is touch & go, so sometimes I still can’t use the webcam features.

Having one program is way better than having to toggle several different clients, and makes you much more accessible for your contacts across multiple networks. And it’s fully customizable with different skins and plugins. It really is one messenger to rule them all!

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