Solo Technology

Meebo is a web-based instant messaging app that I’ve been using for the past several months. It handles a wide array of networks, offers logging and works just about anywhere you can get a web browser. As I logged on this morning, I noticed that some things were different. A glance at their blog post shows just how different! For starters, they’ve left “alpha” status.

The spiffy face lift and new logon screens are the first obvious differences. But there are a couple of other changes that are really really welcome. For instance, we can now manage buddy lists via Drag ‘n Drop. No more having to fire up individual IM clients to re-org groups. Priceless.

Pop-out mode is probably my second favorite new feature. The buddy list and/or individual conversation dialogs can be “popped out” of the web page to be their own little windows. This is something I never really missed in the past (but I admired it when I looked at Mabber) but now that it’s an option with Meebo I’m already loving it. Minimizes all the jumping around in Firefox tabs, for instance. Just pop out the ongoing conversations and keep chatting while viewing other tabs.

A note on popping out chats: You may have to tweak your browser’s “tab settings” a bit. For Firefox 2, it works great. However, I have my Internet Explorer 7 settings such that the popped out chat becomes another tab. Truly defeating the purpose! I’ll have to make some adjustments there soon. Not sure what the default behavior would be for IE7… I’ve tweaked quite a bit.

Big change number 3? Improved logs. Not only are they faster and redesigned, but there’s finally a search option! That fills an existing need very nicely and literally made me grin when I first saw it.

There’s also the new ability to individually log on/off of IM protocols. But alas, no ability to individually change status.

Overall, continued greatness from the Meebo folks and definitely worth a look if you haven’t yet.

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