Gaim - (Open Source)
Chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger and stay on an IRC channel at the same time is possible when using Pidgin software.
Pidgin is an email client that allows to chat with MSN, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ and other contacts, from a single interface. Available in several languages, this software offers convenient features to comfortably talk.
Pidgin software brings together in a single window the AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber / XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu- Gadu, IRC, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MXit, MySpaceIM and Zephyr contacts.
The application gives the ability to chat with multiple contacts at once even if they come from different networks discussion. It is even possible to make a conference if necessary.
Even if the icons of contacts for each account are already marked by their respective icons, it does not prevent the user to create customized friends, relatives, colleagues categories, etc.
Pidgin offers several smileys to liven up the discussion. As the software supports adding plugins, user can also download more smileys on the Internet to enrich the library.
version 2.4.3 (07/01/2008):
libpurple:
* Yahoo! Japan now uses UTF-8, matching the behavior of official clients
and restoring compatibility with the web messenger (Yusuke Odate)
* Setting your buddy icon once again works for Yahoo! accounts.
* Fixes in the Yahoo! protocol to prevent a double free, crashes on
aliases, and alias functionality
* Fix crashes in the bonjour protocol
* Always use UTF-8 for Yahoo! (#5973)
* Fix a crash when the given jabber id is invalid.
* Make the IRC "unknown message" debugging messages UTF-8 safe.
* Fix connecting to ICQ
* Fix a memleak when handling jabber xforms.
Pidgin:
* Include the send button plugin in the win32 build
* Various memory leak fixes