Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 12 iCHAT
Another popular solution is to use a multi-protocol communication tool that understands
all the major chat protocols. Adium is by far the best of these. Adium is Mac-only and open
source, and the guys who work on Adium are really cool, to boot.
Adium supports AIM, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Bonjour,
and several other protocols I’ve never even heard of. It has a slick interface, it’s easy to use, and
best of all, it’s free. You can get Adium at www.adiumx.com/.
Finally, for those who like what iChat has done for their long-distance bill, but miss the
whole telephone experience, there’s Skype. Unlike iChat, Skype can actually place voice calls to
standard phones. Skype has a nice Mac client, which you can download from www.skype.com/.
Summary
iChat is a fun and useful tool for keeping in contact with people all over the world instantly.
While there are still times when e-mail is preferable to IM, this is becoming a more important
means of communicating on the Internet.
Now that we’ve covered most of the Internet tools that come with Leopard, you should be
all set for about 90 percent of what most people use computers for these days. Of course, you
probably didn’t buy a Mac just to surf the Internet (although it’s a good choice if you did). The
next section of this book will deal with some of the other applications that come with Leopard,
as well as touch upon iLife and iWork.