It’s an online life – Messaging

Online Life Tool: Meebo

Replaces: Nothing, but provides on-the-go usage of almost any instant messenger application

Instant messaging is something that has become ubiquitous in everyone’s online life, not just mine. Everyone who spends any time at all online uses at least one instant messenger application. Because of this a lot of times the best way to get in touch with someone is to message them. In fact, many online services are beginning to embrace messaging as a way to interact with their APIs.

While the iPhone has a great SMS application (which I’ll reference plenty later) sometimes you need to message someone on a specific protocol (AIM, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, Jabber/Google Talk). In these cases Meebo does a great job of giving you web-based access and the ability to carry on a short conversation. I say short only because the client isn’t designed to always be on, so in general you have your conversation and sign off.

On my Windows Mobile device there were several applications I had purchased over the years in attempts to have an “always on” chat client. Everything from IRC to AIM was tried and I ended up disappointed with all of them.

For what it’s worth, Meebo is really, really good at what it does. But that doesn’t forgive the fact that there are still no really, really good built-in, “always on” messaging clients for those of us who are mobile and have an unlimited data plan which is always connecting anyway. Lucky for us iPhone users, word on the street is that there are hooks in the Apple SDK for the iPhone that will allow applications to continue running when not in focus. This should allow good messaging applications to be written, especially on the heels of a 3G release sometime in the near future. Beware, though, battery life will suffer.