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 ^[1], 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 ^[2]. Adium has a really cool looking interface and has a lot of nice features.

^[3]

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.

^[4]

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 ^[5] (Including ICQ ^[6] and .Mac ^[7])
• Jabber ^[8] (Including Google Talk ^[9] and LiveJournal ^[10])
• MSN Messenger ^[11]
• Yahoo! Messenger ^[12] (Including Yahoo! Japan ^[13])
• Bonjour ^[14] (Compatible with iChat)
• MySpace IM ^[15]
• Gadu-Gadu ^[16]
• Novell Groupwise ^[17]
• QQ ^[18]
• Lotus Sametime ^[19]

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!