If you’re on a Mac, you probably wish that there was an application that you could use to chat with all of your online buddies at the same time! There are a couple of applications out there, but mostly for Windows. There is also a web site that you can use called Meebo, which lets you chat with buddies from AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, and MSN for free without having to download or install any software.

Still, if you’re a Mac OS X user and you would prefer a desktop application for your chatting purposes, you can check out an open-source app called Adium. Adium has a really cool looking interface and has a lot of nice features.

All of your friends from all services show up in one window with little icons on the right to show from which service the user is from.

The chat window is tabbed so you don’t have to clutter your desktop with 20 chat windows all over the place! The icons and the OS X interface looks great and really make the application worthwhile just because of it’s looks! Each user is color-coded and you can change the colors or the entire skin or theme if you like.

Adium supports a bunch of different services, including the following:

• AOL Instant Messenger (Including ICQ and .Mac)
• Jabber (Including Google Talk and LiveJournal)
• MSN Messenger
• Yahoo! Messenger (Including Yahoo! Japan)
• Bonjour (Compatible with iChat)
• MySpace IM
• Gadu-Gadu
• Novell Groupwise
• QQ
• Lotus Sametime

Here are a couple of the notable features of Adium which make it an excellent choice for any Mac users looking for a unified chat application:

• OTR Encryption
• Tabbed Messaging
• File Transfer
• Webkit Message Display

It also supports about 20+ languages. Overall, it’s a cool app with great looks and it’s completely free! Enjoy!