How to Manage All Your IM Connections in One Program

Instant Messaging has become ubiquitous among computer users, especially those who frequently spend long hours on a PC. Friends and family members stay in touch while surfing the web. Co-workers and business associates can fire quick questions and answers back and forth. Best of all, no telephone is required.

Multiple IM Protocols

One challenge faced by users of IM software is fact that their contacts may use any one of a number of providers, each supporting similar but different services. For example, one may have some contacts on AOL (AIM), some using Yahoo! (YIM), others with Google (GTalk), and yet others using ICQ or even good old Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

Traditionally, each of these programs required a different piece of software (known as an IM client) to manage contacts and connections between users. This meant installing multiple programs, and introduced complexity in maintaining contact lists. Fortunately, there is a completely free IM client that will work with virtually all common IM providers, namely, pidgin. Pidgin supports virtually all of the most common IM formats, including those already mentioned, plus MySpaceIM, MSN (aka Windows Live), Groupwise, Bonjour, Sametime, and a host of others.

Pidgin Plugins

One of pidgin's strengths is its support for plugins. By including mainly core functionality in the base pidgin program, the developers hope to keep the code light and fast. Extra bells and whistles can be added via plugins, allowing the user to choose the specific set of features he or she desires, without adding a lot of unnecessary bloat. Official plugins exist to control the look and feel of the program, to track additional information about each contact, and create and view conversation logs, among other things.

Some 3rd party plugins exist to support additional messaging protocols, like Facebook, Skype, and Twitter, among others. Worried about security? Plugins can also add encryption and spam protection. Videos and music can be embedded in Instant Message windows with plugins. There are currently at least 30 official plugins, and over 90 third party plugins available.

Pidgin is Multi-Platform

Pidgin is available for various flavors of Linux (installation packages for Ubuntu and Fedora, others can be built from source), Windows, MAC OS X, FreeBSD, and probably the other BSD variations as well. Pidgin can also be installed on a removable device such as a thumb drive, for use on any similar computer. Linux / UNIX users should use their package managers to install pidgin if it is offered. For example, on FreeBSD, pidgin is in the ports collection under /usr/ports/net-im/pidgin. Otherwise, use one of the installation packages mentioned previously, or just build it from source. Windows users can simply download and execute the pidgin installer.

Creating Accounts for Pidgin

Note that although pidgin works with practically all protocols and providers, one still has to create the accounts on the various services. For example, to use Google Talk, one needs a Google account. For Yahoo! Messaging, a Yahoo account is required. These accounts can generally be created on the websites of their respective providers. The pidgin FAQ lists some helpful links for account creation.

Pidgin Works Through Firewalls

Some users need communicate with their IM contacts from behind a firewall with limited access to the internet. Pidgin works with a variety of proxies, including HTTP, SOCKS 4, and SOCKS 5. The settings can be made globally, and each individual connection can be configured to either use the global settings or use proxy settings specific to that connection. If all else fails, but SSH traffic is allowed through the firewall, pidgin can be set up to use port-forwarding.

Maintaining Contacts - Pidgin Buddy Lists

The final step in getting all of your IM contacts together into one program is to add them as "Buddies" in pidgin. Buddies are added by the list by selecting the supported protocol from a drop-down list, and entering the contact's ID. The ID is usually the user's email address on the selected service. For example, to add a Yahoo! Messaging user, the ID would be the same as Yahoo! email ID.

Various groups can be defined for different purposes, and Buddies added to one or more of these groups. For example, a pidgin user might create one group for each IM service, and put contacts in the group corresponding to the same service. The Buddy list can then be displayed by group, by status, alphabetically, and in certain combinations of these parameters.

Once the Buddy list has been created, pidgin users can enjoy chatting with all of their friends, family members, and business contacts in one place. Multiple conversations can take place simultaneously, either in multiple windows or in separate tabs in one window. All of the other IM client software can be uninstalled to free up memory and disk space.