Pidgin

When it was first released to the public, way back in 1998 by Mark Spencer, this free application was called Gaim. More than a decade and millions of users later, the application is now called Pidgin and it is one of the most popular multi-platform instant messaging clients out there. Pidgin is an excellent tool for keeping in touch with your friends. By providing support for multiple IM protocols, the application lets you connect to several chat networks and stay in touch with all your friends.

The Pidgin installation file for Windows is 8.9MB in size. That’s not much and it won’t take long for the download to complete. A simple and straightforward setup wizard will show up when you run the installation file. A few clicks later and you will be done installing Pidgin on your Windows-powered PC. Please note that Pidgin is also available for Mac OS X and Linux. Also note that Pidgin is open-source, meaning that the source code is available for download.

When you first launch the application, you will be presented with a “Welcome to Pidgin!” prompt that invites you to add an account. You can easily add accounts for multiple social networks. Here’s the list of supported chat networks: Yahoo!, Google Talk, IRC, AIM, MySpaceAIM, Sametime, Zephyr, Bonjour, Groupwise, MSN, SILC, XMPP, Gadu-GAdu, ICQ, MXit, and SIMPLE. Connect to Google Talk and Yahoo! for example, and you can stay in touch with all your friends from these three networks from within Pidgin’s interface.

Speaking about the interface, it is pretty much everything you would expect from an instant messaging client. At the top there’s the traditional File Menu; underneath it there’s a pane that displays all your friends. Place the mouse over a friend’s name to view more details about him; double click a friend’s name to start a conversation with him.

That’s the main thing you will use Pidgin for – to send instant messages to your friends on Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, or other chat networks. To add a personal touch to your chats, you can change the font Pidgin uses and you can use various smileys. Text isn’t the only thing you can send to friends with Pidgin; support for sending files is also provided. Just like with other IM clients, you can use Pidgin to transfer files to your friends.

Besides supporting many chat protocols, Pidgin also supports a long list of languages. You will be asked to pick a language during the installation process; it’s the first step the setup wizard presents to you.

Pidgin is an excellent tool for staying in touch with friends spread across multiple chat networks.