Adium, the popular Mac IM client that lets users chat across multiple services at once, issued a major new release last night that is sure to please users old and new. Highlights include the addition of Facebook chat to the list of options and a new search bar that lets you quickly find anyone on a long list of contacts.
This incredibly customizable program lets you chat seamlessly across almost every IM network you can think of - the absence of interoperability becomes almost inconsequential after you sign up for an account on each service and tell Adium to log in to each. We are very excited about the upgrade.
We're not sure how likely to use Facebook chat we are, but we know that a lot of people do use it. We'll now be reachable that way too. By telling Adium to connect to social networking status messages, we're also now seeing peoples' Facebook status in Growl notification. That's pretty nice. Not something we'd want for Twitter, but for the less frequently updated Facebook messages that makes sense.
Effective interoperability with Facebook IM makes us think we should take our friend accepting a little more seriously there. Unfortunately, one known issue is that Facebook doesn't want to keep you logged in when you're also logged in via Adium. We hope that can be solved quickly.
One of the most frustrating things about Adium has been that by tying together contacts lists across multiple services, it creates a very long aggregate list. It can be hard to find anyone in particular when you want to initiate a chat. No longer! The new version of Adium solves this UI scaling problem by bringing up a nice search bar when you hit the command-F keys.
Seven months in the making, this update to Adium is a big one. There's sure to be more on the way soon (many people are hoping that video and audio chat will be enabled someday) but in the meantime, check out AdiumXtras, the site where you can find all kinds of skins, plug-ins and other Adium fun.
Comments
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Still no audio/video, so it still feels like playing catch-up IMO.
Posted by: David | August 26, 2008 10:38 AM
Would be great if I could actually transfer files this way too. Still a *major* let down and I switch to Skype or iChat to send things all the time.
Posted by: Phillip | August 26, 2008 2:10 PM
I've never seen most of the icons shown on your dock in the screenshot. Could you share with us what other applications live on your dock?
Posted by: Gilles | August 26, 2008 3:56 PM
Gilles, those are:
Preview, iTunes, Spaces, TimeMachine
then, Twhirl Twitter client, Smultron text editor, Verizon EVDO, Muxtape FluidApp (single app browser), Airfoil audio controler (run browser audio through Airtunes router and speakers), Snackr.net AIR RSS ticker, Resize from SuperPixel (resizing images), Tweetdeck twitter client, Skitch.com screen grab annotation wonder app and you can see the corner of a customized Adium duck, engulfed in flames!
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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August 26, 2008 4:02 PM
great post, thanks for the heads up. just started using adium a few weeks ago and have loved it. search was the feature i wanted most -- glad to hear i now have. nice work, adium!
Posted by: graham mudd
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August 26, 2008 7:02 PM
Is it just me or you can't receive messages back on the FB module of Adium?
Another weird thing I noticed, if you have a facebook page opened and you type in a chat on adium facebook, the message appears on your facebook page's widget too, the other party's reply also appears there but not in adium.
Anyone else experienced the same issues?
Posted by: JadB | August 26, 2008 9:06 PM
How do you "By telling Adium to connect to social networking status messages"?
Posted by: Michael Murray | August 27, 2008 12:36 PM