Save Precious Time With Digsby

Let's say you have the following online accounts:

Instant Messengers

- Windows Live Messenger
- Google Talk (2 different accounts)
- Yahoo! Messenger
- AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
- ICQ

Email

- Windows Live Hotmail
- Gmail (2 different accounts)
- Yahoo! Mail
- Outlook / POP3

Social Networks

- Facebook
- MySpace
- Twitter


So your day begins and you need to connect to all your various instant messengers at once.

You proceed to open up each instant messenger client on your PC - Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk (only allows you to log into one account at a time - so you would need to switch between accounts), Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ. The result? An instant decline in your available memory! You can feel your PC begin to slow down - you barely avoid hitting rock bottom.

A more simplistic approach would be to use an all-in-one instant messenger client such as Pidgin or Trillian - and lose a few features in the process. You would save some memory-usage this way and have easy access to all your various online contacts under one client.

Now, it's time to check your email accounts. Where to begin?! You open your Windows Live Hotmail inbox, check your messages there, reply to a few, delete spam and then log out. You repeat the process (twice) for your Gmail accounts and then for each of your other email accounts in turn - Yahoo! Mail and Outlook.

You fire up Gmail Notifier and log in so you can be notified exactly when you receive new Gmail messages (again, you can only log into one account at a time). You then launch ePrompter so you can be notified with a sound when new mails arrive in your Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and POP3 accounts.

In between chatting and logging into your different email accounts, close to an hour has passed you by. Your "real" work for the day hasn't even started as yet!

You've now covered your instant messengers and email accounts - Horray! But wait - what's going on with your social networks this morning - Facebook, MySpace and Twitter?

So you again open up the relevant websites to see what's new - you log into your Facebook account, accept a few friend requests, update your status to "very busy at work", feed a few dragons, send a few pokes and then log out. Now on to MySpace and then to Twitter.

Article continues below.

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Download the very latest versions of Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, Pidgin, Trillian and Digsby - all from YOUTHERE1.com's Messenger Center.

Get quick access to Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and more with YOUTHERE1.com's Horizon Toolbar.

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You sat down at your desk at 8am and it's now 9:35am.

What if there was ONE program that you can log into that would help you manage ALL of the above - as-it-happens.

Enter "Digsby" - http://www.digsby.com/.

Digsby helps you to manage IM + Email + Social Networks in one easy to use application:

It's 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. Also supports file transfers and audio / video chats.

It's 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.

It's 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.

Digsby works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Screenshots - http://www.digsby.com/screenshots.php.

Now, thanks to Digsby, instead of spending between 8am - 9:35am logging in from one website to the next, launching one client to the next, by 8:05am you can have a good handle of exactly what's going on - from your online contacts, to your emails and social networks.

Setting up Digsby for the first time was quite easy - you simply enter your login credentials for your various accounts and you can choose to auto-login, so the next time Digsby is launched it would log you into all your accounts automatically.

Worried about privacy? You should - but they take care of your concerns in detail here - http://www.digsby.com/privacy.php.

Digsby clocked in at approx. 74,684 KB of memory-usage after having it run for quite a while. By comparision, Internet Explorer 7 clocked in at approx. 230,916 KB with 4 tabs open and IE7Pro running in the background.

Digsby has now eliminated the "need" to have 5 separate instant messenger clients running at the same time, plus it has eliminated the need to have Gmail Notifier and ePrompter running in the background. You are eliminating memory-usage on at least 7 applications right there.

Get Digsby today and save precious time - your own!

UPDATE 1 (01/05/08) - Digsby now supports Facebook Chat in addition to all of the above features!

UPDATE 2 (25/09/08) - Digsby cuts RAM usage by 75%, adds LinkedIn support - http://snipr.com/3trmd. 

Gmail (Finally) Crosses 5 GB of Free Storage

Gmail has recently revved up the speed of its storage counter, which has allowed it to pass the 5 GB mark earlier today. Windows Live Hotmail has been offering 5 GB of free storage for a while now, but this represents a fixed amount, while Gmail's storage is constantly increasing. Yahoo! Mail on the other hand, now offers free unlimited storage.

With Gmail's recent offering of free IMAP access and useful features in its new version, it has certainly come a long way and has vastly increased in popularity. Do you know anyone without a Gmail account?

Now, only if they can lose the "Beta" status in Gmail and finally add the ability to add images in your Gmail signatures. Luckily, you can find out exactly how to do the latter manually by reading my previous post "How To Use An Image In Your Gmail Signature" - http://razorsharpviews.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-use-image-in-your-gmail.html.

UPDATE (25/09/08) - Gmail has just passed the 7 GB mark! 

How To Use An Image In Your Gmail Signature

As of the time of this article, Gmail still does not allow you to use images in your signatures - which is really for security reasons as placing HTML codes in signatures can lead to abuse and the transmission of viruses. So for the time being, Gmail will only allow you to use plain text as your signature - which many people use right now.

There is however, a manual way to add an image to your existing text signature in Gmail, or even as the header of your email.

Here's how:

1) First create your image and upload it to any free image hosting service, such as Photobucket.

2) When your image is uploaded, simply copy the entire image itself as you see it on the page.

3) Create a new message in Gmail and paste in the image anywhere you want. Make sure the image is loading properly.

4) Type in a subject line such as "Email Sig" or anything else that will identify the contents of the email.

5) Click "Save Now", which saves the message as a "Draft".


Now, anytime you want to send out an email with your special image, all you have to do is first open up the draft message, copy the image and then paste it anywhere in your new message.

There may be other ways to accomplish this in Gmail, but the above method works and does not take very long to set up.

Now go ahead and spice up those Gmails!

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