Signals from the Field

If you are like me and have a list of friends, family and co-workers using multiple different instant messenger applications (Google Hangouts/Talk, Facebook Chat, Skype chat etc.) the recent move by IMO.im to get rid of all external IM networks will mean you have to find a new solution. IMO at one time was the leader in IM aggregators but, alas, that will be no more within a few days from now. My rather tedious task now is to find a replacement aggregator that will do the trick. Meebo.com was my goto at one time, however it got gobbled up by Google and also is no more.

Where to start? To be frank I can't say I've found an answer yet but I thought I'd track my progress for anyone in the same boat - perhaps my efforts will help others too.

I've tried most of them Online, Desktop and iPhone wise and can't say I've found the perfect solution yet. The perfect solution for me would be to have an all encompassing web-based version that works for all the main networks across most all devices - perhaps a bit of a pipe dream I know. What I have found might just work for me albeit a bit of a hodge podge combination of multiple options.

Here is the solution I am currently trying, keeping in mind the 3 chat networks I need the most are GTalk, Skype and FB Chat:

1) Desktop (Windows 7): the downloadable version of Trillian (for an extra few bucks you can get things like saved history, which seems fair considering it would be nice if at least one of these aggregators was able to survive).

2) iPhone (you can likely replicate this on Android but I'm not 100% sure): For Skype I use the paid version of IM+, for Google Talk I use the Trillian App (the Trillian app doesn't seem to have Skype for some reason) and then for Facebook I just use their "Messenger" app.

I use the few different options listed simply because interface and usability are very important to me. Although there are several different options out there, I just never felt completely comfortable with the others. We will see how things go, I'll post an update here in a week or so if I discover anything better, or if I find this new setup I describe works.

By the way, 3 cheers for IMO for the great service they did provide while it lasted, I wish them the best of luck with their new endeavors.

Have you had any recent successes in this realm you would like to share?

[UPDATE] 3/19/14

I have upgraded Trillian to the Pro version for $20 a year. It works well for me overall. I had to move to the Beejive iPhone App for Google Talk which also works well for my needs.

I was looking around for a nifty way of examining load issues on clients sites. I wanted some way of quickly pin pointing which images/files were causing the issue (or the delay was even being caused by site file sizes in the first place!). I discovered a cool little site called Pingdom that did the job.

Simply enter a URL and even check the save URL box. Pingdom drills down through your file load times and display in KB each different component of the page. It also gives you an outline summary of basic info about the site, how many images, style sheets, plugin, redirects, external objects etc. Simple and neat it does what I needed!

But Pingdom is more than just that, it is also an uptime and performance monitoring system. The system lets you know if you site has gone down, gives you uptime reports, response time reports and connects nicely to Twitter, SMS and Email to alert you if troubles a-brewing.

It’s been around for a little while now but yours truly just came across it and thought it deserved a mention. In this crazy world of social media it’s easy to forget that you are pumping a lot of information into your Online social tools and all in all, if your online data is important to you, Backupify is an easy way to get it back should anything go wrong. Backupify works with Twitter, Google Docs, Wordpress, Gmail, Facebook, Zoho, Delicious, Flickr, Basecamp, Photobucket, Blogger, FriendFeed and more.

Obviously data you generate today is not stored on your computer. Granted, it is unlikely that an Online service will simply lose your data, just as it is unlikely that your hard drive will crash if you are good at up keep etc. however it can and does happen all the time. Hackers target these social mediums obviously and so it might be worth considering using something like Backupify.

Backupify uses the Amazon cloud to backup your data and the nice thing about this is that should Backupify prove to be a flash in the pan (which seems unlikely) then your data has been stored on a titan of the Internet … and we’d have to hope they make their own backups .

You know technically it's not my turn again to add a blog entry but I just got excited about this one and ... well couldn't help myself. Big news: Microsoft is finally doing what I have been saying they should do for 10 years - they are opening up retail stores.