Exchange Instant Messages in Your Browser with IM+ - jarvisuppeathe

I put on't use instant messaging that much anymore, but when I do, I address Meebo Courier. This free service, a favorite of mine for geezerhood, offers hybridization-chopine instant electronic messaging right on inside my Web browser — no additional software package compulsory.

IT was to my dismay, then, to learn that Google (which recently acquired the company) plans to terminate Meebo Messenger on July 11, 2022. That's fitting three weeks away!

Thankfully, a company titled Shape has stepped in with IM+, a free armed service that offers cross-platform instant messaging word-perfect within your web browser — no additional software program required.

IM+ allows you to sign into one or more of your existing chat accounts, including Purport, Facebook, GTalk, ICQ, MSN, Skype, Yahoo, and a handful of foreign (i.e. over the sea) services.

You can do this without so much as registering with IM+, though there's unitary key benefit to signing prepared for an account: the service will uphold all your messaging-service information so you wear't own to sign into from each one one manually the incoming sentence you return.

In other words, you'll just log into your IM+ account statement, and fast: all your messaging accounts are signed in and ready for visit.

Like Meebo, IM+ retrieves your contacts from those electronic messaging accounts, so you don't take over to rebuild your friend lists. In point of fact, your friends South Korean won't be whatsoever the wiser that you'ray chatting with them from a third-political party service of process.

Another great perk: IM+ can optionally keep a message chronicle, which is great for reviewing chats you've had with business associates operating theater even friends.

Peerless area where IM+ falls short: IT doesn't let you purview multiple chat sessions in multiple windows. You birth to bop to and fro between contacts, clicking them in your listing to send Oregon read a message. At least on that point's a separate Chats tab where you can go through only those chats that are active, but I definitely prefer Meebo's windowed feeler.

Update: It turns out there's a setting that does allow for floating chat windows, just like with Meebo. So no demerits on that look! And I neglected to mention that IM+ as wel allows you to send files to friends, a by all odds handy lineament.

I did encounter one problem when trying to sign into my Bumpkin history, though it wasn't genuinely an IM+ offspring: because of changes to Yahoo's terms of service, I couldn't sign in without first downloading and instalmen the Yahoo Messenger app. Or, at least, that's the error subject matter I got from IM+. But after sign language into Yahoo Messenger fitting on the Web (something I hadn't done in a while), that cleared the way for me to check in via IM+. Problem solved.

If, like me, you're bereavement the close at hand loss of Meebo Courier, take console in IM+. With any hazard, it'll stick around for a while.

Conducive Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer applied science. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com, OR try the treasure treasure trove of helpful folk in the PC World Community Forums. Sign capable have the Tussle-Free PC newsletter e-armored to you each week.