gHacks technology news » instant messanger http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:24:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Instantbird a Mozilla based Instant Messenger http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/20/instantbird-a-mozilla-based-instant-messenger/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/20/instantbird-a-mozilla-based-instant-messenger/#comments Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:56:28 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/20/instantbird-a-mozilla-based-instant-messenger/ Instantbird plans to be for Instant Messengers what Firefox is for web browsers. The first version with the number 0.1 does show a lot of promise but naturally lacks the stability of a software that has been developed for years. It uses the Mozilla rendering engine to render IMs and the Pidgin libpurple to connect to the various networks.

Eight Instant Messaging networks are currently mentioned on the Instantbird homepage, those are: AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, QQ, XMPP and Yahoo!. Several others are however available as well if you want to add a new network. It runs pretty solid for such an early version though and it will be interesting to see how this project evolves in the future.

The roadmap looks promising and is outlined at the developers website of Instandbird. Localization, smiley and sound themes are for instance scheduled for version 0.2 of the client. It will take some time but if the developers manage to put the same effort and dedication into this project than the other teams are putting into developing Firefox, Thunderbird and Songbird they will surely create a remarkable software.

instantbird

Instantbird is Open Source and available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh.

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Instantbird Homepage
via Download Squad

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/20/instantbird-a-mozilla-based-instant-messenger/feed/ 5 Encrypt Instant Messaging with Pidgin Encryption http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/13/encrypt-instant-messaging-with-pidgin-encryption/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/13/encrypt-instant-messaging-with-pidgin-encryption/#comments Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:30:13 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/13/encrypt-instant-messaging-with-pidgin-encryption/ I never got used to install and run Instant Messaging clients, maybe because I always had other ways to chat with friends and contacts. Instead of using Instant Messengers I used Internet Relay Chat, Skype, Teamspeak or forums. Still, a lot of users do use IMs heavily and those that use Pidgin, which is a client that connects to many networks, can now encrypt their messages with Pidgin Encryption.

The only real problem that most users could face is that every participants needs to run the plugin to be able to encrypt the chat. Windows users simply download and install the plugin. The last step would be to activate it in Tools > Plugins. This generates the RSA keys that are used to encrypt and decrypt the messages.

A click on the key icon and the selection of Enable Encryption starts an encrypted session. The public key of your contact will automatically be downloaded to your computer and will be used to encrypt your messages to him and vice versa.

Features:

  • Automatically creates a public/private key pair for you upon loading the plugin
  • Automatically transmits your public key to other users.
  • Supports 512 – 4096 bit keys.
  • Saves keys of known users, and warns you if their public key has changed.
  • Embeds all encryption and keys inside HTML, so if the other user doesn’t have the plugin, they will get a little message telling them about the plugin, and won’t get a screen full of garbage.
  • Stores keys in human readable files in your .gaim/.pidgin directory, in case you ever need to copy/edit them by hand. Which you really shouldn’t have to do.
  • Automatically recognizes if you are chatting with someone who has the plugin- see the Preferences dialog.
  • Available for the Windows version of Pidgin.
  • Modular and extensible. If you want to define a different type of encryption, you can use this plugin as a wrapper to take care of transporting the encrypted binary over the IM pipe.

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Pidgin Encryption

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