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im

All-in-one chat client for Android

IM+ takes all the fuss out of mobile instant messaging by enabling you to connect to your Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Facebook, and other IM accounts, all from a single application window. With its clean design and simple user interface, chatty folks on the go may wonder how they ever lived without it.

Under the Contacts tab, all of your contacts are compiled in a single list. That way, you don't have to bother with switching among accounts in order to chat. In fact, once you're on IM+, you should feel absolutely no distinction between the different … Read more

Skype for Android opens up video calling--sort of

The official Skype app for Android lets you place voice calls to landlines, mobile numbers, or other Skype users. It also offers built-in SMS capabilities, instant messaging for chatting with your Skype connections, and for a select few supported devices, video calls.

Skype's user interface is incredibly clean and simple to use. The Home screen displays four icons to cover all your basic needs: Contacts, Recent, Call phones, Profile. Above the icons, there's a small bar where you can change your mood message (Skype's version of a status update). And at the very top, there's a … Read more

Smartphones to equal 28 percent of handsets in '11

There's no stopping the smartphone momentum.

Global sales of smartphones will top 420 million units this year, accounting for 28 percent of all handsets sold, according to market research and consultancy IMS Research. By 2016, the firms projects sales will exceed 1 billion, with one out of every two handsets sold a smartphone.

The exploding interest in the area is sparked by the proliferation of applications that can expand the device's capabilities, as well as the availability of more affordable smartphones, helped largely by the free Android platform provided by Google.

Despite the opportunity, IMS says not all … Read more

Reviewed: Office 365

Office 365, announced today, gives professionals and small businesses a subscription service that lets them work from anywhere using familiar-feeling Web-enabled applications. Combined with hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync, Office 365 is designed to enable users to share, collaborate, and communicate in the cloud. In our testing during the beta, we found that the tools worked well across the board (with some hiccups), and expect that many people who use Office on desktop Macs and PCs will appreciate the familiar look and feel, which should help them get up and running quickly.

Obviously, Office 365 is going to … Read more

Trillian 5 adds Pro features for free

Trillian, the popular multiple-personality IM client, recently upgraded to version 5, giving it a refreshed interface, improved social integration, and, get this, all of the Pro features from previous versions, all for free. Now every user can enjoy themes, activity history viewer, and multiple location sign-in, along with the newly developed continuous client feature, which keeps chats synced across all devices. For now, these upgrades have only hit the Windows client (download) and the now free Android app (download). Mac, iOS, and Blackberry are all on deck.

While the idea of free is nice, as we all know, nothing ever … Read more

Google Talk Guru turns IM into a search tool

Always looking for new ways to deliver its search results, Google has rolled out a new app that combines instant messaging with search.

Launched today as the latest experiment in the Google Labs playground, Google Talk Guru offers you a chat session through which you can ask certain questions and receive responses from an automated bot set up on the back end.

For now, the app can handle only certain types of questions from among a limited number of categories, such as weather, sports scores, math equations, definitions, and translations. But like other Google Labs apps, it's something to … Read more

Dual Core rocks the 'nerdcore' hip hop stylings (Q&A)

If you don't know what nerdcore is, you might find the lyrics to the song "My Girlfriend's a Hacker" a little strange.

"My girlfriend's a hacker, best hacker ever," the song begins. "She's quick on her feet and her code is so clever. Yes she's a hacker and brilliant as well. Who knows what she cast, but I'm under her spell."

The song is from nerdcore hip hop specialists Dual Core, the duo made up of a programmer from Cincinnati, Ohio, known as Int Eighty, and a graphic … Read more

The 404 783: Where we don't kill the text messenger (podcast)

The 404 Digest for Episode 783

Apple pulls a Christian iPhone app promising a cure for homosexuality. "But I'm a Cheerleader" is a satirical film about a fictitious homosexual-rehabilitation camp. Time Warner Cable is forced to remove 17 channels from its iPad app.

Netflix strikes an exclusive deal for David Fincher's new show, "House of Cards." Netflix streaming may lose some Showtime programs. Pranks go digital with TxtSpoof. A visitor from Toronto controls Times Square video screens...for real this time. A conceptual solution to Jeff's multiuser iPad profile issue.

Episode 783 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Convofy brings Facebook-like features to business

I thought the whole "Twitter for the enterprise" concept died out after Yammer launched at the TechCrunch conference in 2008. It's an interesting tool, as is competitor SocialCast, but while products like these are achieving some early successes, the real-time, social-networking-at-work thing has not taken the business world by storm. Remember Google Wave? It's likely because businesses that already get the concept are using Notes or Sharepoint, and those that don't need to be convinced by their employees--who are dealing with their own social-network overload thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The new Convofy, which … Read more