I’m a big fan of Trillian, the IM aggregator, but I had to download and install AIM, AOL’s Instant Messenger last night for an abortive video conference. Sheesh, what a monster it is (AIM, not the conference). Do AOL and the other biggies still not get it? For sure, Trillian is something of a parasite. … Read more
No. It is a real problem, if only because there’s still plenty of sleazy people figuring out new ways to ruin your day. There’s some skepticism out there about this new spam threat: SPIM, in case you didn’t know, is spam that’s delivered, not to your inbox, but to your instant messaging chat program, like … Read more
Who watches over the watchers? In software, it seems, it’s often the same folk. Reading a press release for X-Cleaner, “a privacy tool suite that detects and removes installed spyware and adware components”, it sounded interesting enough for a mention. After all, it “includes tools to securely delete files, edit the registry, disable startup programs”, … Read more
Here’s a list of some of the available ‘PC to SMS’ services, courtesy of Russell Beattie. My own offerings: Both Yahoo and ICQ chat offer some kind of SMS service, but I’ve found them to be somewhat unreliable. This is less to do with them and more to do with the end provider, but in … Read more
It’s now pretty clear where this Instant Messaging thing is going, and why Yahoo and Microsoft have suddenly started blocking third parties from piggybacking their services. Microsoft have announced a hook-up with news agency and financial data transporter Reuters allowing users of the Messenger network to chat with the 50,000 members of Reuters own internal … Read more