From the original version of World Chat to mIRC, ICQ, and whatnot, I have been in and around virtual chatting and messaging systems for quite some time. And with the availability of more systems, managing all of them has just gotten harder.

Luckily, an application such as Adium exists to ease us of our woes. What is it? Well, its a multi-protocol instant messaging client for the Mac. This means, I can be on my Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Bonjour and lately, with Facebook chat all by just firing up one application!

I have been using this for a while and it was only until recently that I regained my fascination with it. Aside from the most obvious point of being multi-protocol, its being highly customizable from the looks to the various notifications are definitely a thumbs up. And it being open source and free only add to its greatness as an app.

Adium however is not without caveats. For one, voice and video calls are still not supported. Even if you install the Skype plugin, you would still need to have Skype running in order for it to function properly… beats the idea of having an all-in-one messaging system.

Another thing is with sent files. I am unsure if this happens with everyone else, but it seems that if a contact were to send me a file (or vice versa), it would tell you that the transmission is complete but the file is nowhere to be found. Adium has been updated to version 1.3.1 as of this writing, and I am unsure as to whether this issue has been fixed.

Overall, Adium seems to be a pretty solid app that I would recommend to everyone on a Mac. Windows users have something similar in Trillian which I have used for a while, but it just doesn’t give me the same experience and the basic version, although is good, does not offer a lot of features. If you want more, then you will have to get the Trillian Pro for US$25.

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