Over a year and a half ago I announced that I was “digging Digsby” the multi-protocol instant messaging application. What wasn’t to love? It handled most instant messaging networks, Twitter, Facebook (added later) notifications and chat, along with some pretty solid email notification features as well. Oh, and all your settings are managed separately so that a new installation is ready to go almost instantly. (Dunno about you, but I always forget my various IM network passwords…)
Now, it hasn’t all been roses. For one thing, Digsby does a lot, but it also uses a lot of memory. That’s not so great on my netbook and older machines with limited resources.
Secondly, they like to send direct messages urging you to vote for them in various contests and polls. OK, that’s marketing, I get it – this thing is free after all, but it gets annoying over time.
Speaking of free? While the installer is no longer littered with as many crap-ware apps to dodge, there have been some rough edges on that journey.
Finally, this week, I received an email (I guess I opted-in at some point…) pushing me towards a “Tweet for Money” scheme that the digsby guys must’ve partnered with.
Final straw. “Make money on twitter schemes” are a major pet peeve for me.
Maybe Digsby should offer a pay option?
Replacing Digsby
After looking around, I haven’t really found anything that could do everything that Digsby does in one package. Trillian’s Astra might get close, but I really didn’t like how it handled Twitter and Facebook. So, back to a collection of utilities.
Instant Messaging – Back to Pidgin. Actually, running the PortableApps version from my Dropbox account. That way my config is ready to go from all my machines – and the logs are centralized. One spot to update too.
Social Networking – I’m using TweetDeck for twitter and facebook. When I had last looked at it (last year sometime?) I didn’t like it at all. Now it pretty much blows me away.
Mail notification – At the moment I’m relying on the Firefox add-on Gmail Manager. While Firefox isn’t necessarily the default browser on all of my machines, it is almost guaranteed to be running.
TweetDeck and Gmail Manager both can be configured to do nice little popup notifications in the bottom left of the screen. I’m a fan of that.
What are other folks using for this stuff? Any good “all-in-one” apps that I’ve missed?
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December 20th, 2009 
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This is the same combo I’ve ended up with so i don’t really hsve anything to add except – “yeah – what he said”.
P.
Great minds, thinking alike
TweetDeck is pretty good. Although you may want to check out Seesmic as well.
LOL. Guess I’m in your old shoes right now. I just started with Digsby and I’m pretty much enjoying it. I’ve used Pidgin in the past but never really liked it. Trillian too in the pre-Astra days and back then it was my choice for multi-IM client. I really like Digsby because of its integration of Facebook and Twitter. Saves me the trouble of having other clients or checking the homepage all the time.