Following on from my previous post where I took a look at social networking and how interaction has changed on the Internet over the years, I came across a few programs which tie in chat programs, email and social networking in one neat package. I used Trillian years back, and cannot remember why exactly, but no longer have it on my system. Probably just got left behind as upgrades, new drives and new machines evolved. There are quite a few of these all-in-one programs available now though - Trillian, Pidgin, Miranda and Meebo - as examples, but the one that really caught my eye was Digsby. From the authors' themselves: Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. digsby is an email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as 'Delete' or 'Report Spam' with just one click. digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to. First impressions are quite good, with the only problem as ...

Once upon an eon ago, I used a webmail product called Hotmail. Truth be told, I think I still have an account or 50 in place, but none of them are ever used. I have also used Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, a work-based Outlook Web Access [OWA] and numerous other email options. But one stands out head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion, the monster we all know as G-Mail [or GoogleMail for some]. For more information on why it is called G-Mail in some places and Googlemail in others, do a quick search on Google itself. And why do I choose G-Mail? Basically, it works. It rarely has any downtime, it is so easy to set up and use and it's quick, reliable and does everything I want. The fact it is web-based has obvious benefits in that it is accessible from any location with an Internet connection and it has all the functionality and features that I need. The 'but' though comes from my personal wish to set up an email account in my own fashion. Functionality is excellent and so is the ability to use it as your base email portal - by directing all other email accounts ...