imo.im – Merge Multiple Chat Accounts Online
If you’re not at home or don’t have access to your favorite instant messaging clients for any other reason, there’s an easy way to still be able to log onto all your favorite chat accounts: the elegant online service imo.im provides a spartan interface you can use for chatting via your Facebook, Live Messenger, AIM/ICQ, MySpace, Yahoo, Skype and Google Talk account simultaneously, without any additional sign-up. You can link all your accounts permanently, so that next time you use IMO, you’ll only have to log on with one of your existing IM accounts in order to access all of them. Ideal for traveling, and maybe even for permanent use. It’s not just plain chatting that IMO supports: file transfers, video and voice chat are available through little Flash applets available for all protocols. This however sometimes (for video always) works outside of the chat protocol you currently use to communicate with, so the recipient will have to open up a browser window for the voice/video communication. Nothing really wrong with that, though, as it does allow cross-protocol support, even if the protocol itself doesn’t allow such communication. Additionally, a whiteboard is available on which you and your contact can scratch whatever you want simultaneously. Imo.im has been around for quite a while now, but with its offered functionality it deserves a lot more attention, even with its apparent alpha status.
