meebo - Browser based multi-system IM chat
I have been looking at meebo, an IM chat program that is entirely browser-based (thus nothing to download and install), and in addition to its own account allows you to register your AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk and MSN accounts, so you can chat with your contacts on those services as well.
The idea is good - in fact, I should say the ideas (plural) are good, because cross-system chat allows you to consolidate several clients into one, and having it browser-based not only saves you having to download and install a client program, but also means that it is not tied to whatever operating systems the developers choose to support. I have tested it on Vista, XP, Ubuntu and Mandriva, and it seemed to work just fine on all of them. According to their web page, it will also work on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but I don't have either of those to try. In principle it should also work on a cell phone with internet access, but I just tried it on my Nokia 6234, using Opera Mini, and I couldn't get it to connect.
Besides ordinary one-to-one IM chat, meebo also has "rooms" which any user can set up for community (group) chat. Rooms can be focused on common interest or hobbies, groups and families, or pretty much anything else you would like. There is a "room-browse" page that shows featured rooms, and has lists by topic. Judging from the number of rooms, and the number of participants in each room, this is apparently a well-used feature.
The people behind meebo seem to be quite enthusiastic as well, judging from their web page and their blogs. I got a blog notice about new wallpapers being available, with a good, detailed explanation of how to find and use them (and a nice needle at one particular browser, when they said that the new wallpapers were resizable on Firefox, Safari and Opera, and if they wouldn't resize for you then you should get a standards-compliant browser. Hmmm... I wonder what browser they could have been talking about, if it isn't Firefox, Safari or Opera...).
There are a few significant shortcomings with meebo. One of the largest is that while they support four other chat services, and they are big ones, that isn't really all that many. Gizmo5, which I use daily, supports quite a few more, such as iChat, MySpaceIM, ICQ, QQ, Gadu-Gadu and more. Gizmo5 also has a browser-based client, accessible through giz5.com (a fairly new development), but the Gizmo client isn't as sophisticated as the meebo client. Gizmo also has a native client for lots of mobile devices, smart phones and the like. I can tell you, using the Gizmo5 client on my Nokia cell phone is a lot nicer, and a lot easier, than working my way through the web page, even with Opera Mini. Also, Gizmo has put a LOT of effort into optimizing the internet use of the mobile/cell clients, to keep down your mobile internet bills.
Overall I find meebo to be well designed, pleasant to use, and good at what it claims to do. If you want IM text chat, and only that, it can be a good, fast, easy choice, and you can consolidate your contacts from a few other services at the same time.
jw 13/8/2008