By: Hillel Fuld

As the Web continues to develop and change, some things seem to have stayed the same. I still remember opening my first email account, or when I first joined AIM (or was it ICQ?). After all these years, email is still here and it still plays a very central role in our online activities. OK, I know it is only second place to social media in terms of the amount of time people spend doing it online, but second place ain’t too shabby.

IM is another such example. It has been around for what seems like forever, and it does not seem to be slowing down any time soon.  Mobile IM apps are a booming industry with some household names like IM+, Nimbuzz, Fring, eBuddy, and Meebo releasing new updates constantly.

Now, let’s talk about another hot trend, Cloud Computing, with the leading player being none other than Google. If you have not noticed, the direction our data and online activities are going, is toward the cloud. For all of you who  have no clue what that last sentence meant, the “cloud” is a term explaining the concept of storing data and other things in a virtual server as opposed to a native one. OK, that is even more confusing than the previous sentence. Maybe an example or two will simplify things. You can write, edit, and store a Word file locally using Microsoft Word or you can do the exact same thing in the cloud using Google Docs. You can send, reply, forward, or store emails directly on your computer using Microsoft Outlook or you can do it in the cloud using Gmail. Now it should be clearer to you. You can read more about the cloud in this article about Chrome OS.

Google seems to be leading the way to complete cloud domination with services such as Google Calendar, Tasks, Picasa, and even their latest acquisition, Picnik, which actually enables you to edit and modify your photos online.

It is therefore no surprise that one of the first ever Google employees, Georges Harik, founded a Web-based IM client called imo that can compete with the best of the native clients similar to the way Google online services compete with traditional native programs. imo has Google written all over it. Its interface is ultra basic and reminds me of Google.com in its simplistic nature. The entire imo interface revolves around a nice search box on top that enables you to search through your IM conversations, which are stored in, you guessed it, the cloud.

So, enough about the Google connection, let’s talk about imo and why it dominates the Web-based IM space. First of all, let me say, that there are surprisingly not too many companies who have entered this competition, with the main and most well known one being Meebo. However, imo has some seriously amazing features that can only be compared to the best of the native IM programs, such as Digsby, Pidgin, or Adium.

So, as I said, the UI is simple and obvious. imo supports multiple IM protocols, which if you are not familiar means you can log in to all your accounts from one place without the need to download anything. imo supports AIM, MSN, Google Talk, MySpace, Yahoo, and two more that separate it from the pack, Facebook Chat and Skype.

Let me just emphasize that IMO is the only service I know of that enables you to Skype using audio and video without the need to download a client. So, here is how it works, you access imo.im and login to all your accounts. You can then link them together so the next time you log in to one of them, the rest of the accounts automatically log in. As soon as you are logged in, which takes significantly less time than any other IM client I have ever tried, local or Web-based, you see your buddy list on the right side of the screen.

The online contacts have a green icon next to them representing the list they are on. So your Facebook friends have the Facebook logo, your Skype contacts have the Skype logo, and so on. You can easily collapse any group in the list by pressing the arrow next to the title, which allows you to view the entire list without scrolling.  On the top of the list, there are a few options. You can add a buddy, upload an icon, notify your friends that you are on imo, update your status, or search for a contact in the list.

On the left side of the list, you have the search box, which enables you to search your IM history with extreme ease. Then as you move left on the screen, you are presented with a few options including the ability to “pop out” your list so it appears outside of the current window, making it more like a native app. Do not be fooled by the simplistic interface, imo actually includes some seriously advanced social features, such as the ability to share pictures easily with your contacts, draw with them on what is called the “Whiteboard”, as well as start an audio and video chat with multiple contacts. Not too shabby.

imo also has a Preferences tab, once again making it extremely similar to your average native IM client. However, the preferences are a lot more basic than most clients I have tried. You can disable storing of your chat history, choose whether to allow people not on your list to contact you, enable emoticons, and choose your color scheme. That is all. The truth is, I do not need much more, but one thing I would have liked to see are settings for sound notifications, which are extremely quiet and easily missed in imo.

To summarize imo, I would say that with no download, no need to login and an extremely lightweight and robust interface, you have pretty much anything you would need to effectively communicate with your IM buddies. However, as awesome as imo is, it does not stop there. The list of features they are now working on is quite impressive and includes some awesome new additions. Some of the new features include speech to text and text to speech in all languages (wow, we are all going to be talking to our computers soon), face and object recognition (um, wow?), 3D avatars, offline messaging and email integration, file transfer, and much much more.

Just in case you are not a fan of the whole “cloud” model, imo also offers a downloadable Windows compatible client, which I have tried and with which I was extremely impressed.

Like I said, coming from x Googlers, imo not only looks and acts like a Google product, it also impresses like one. Just in case you were wondering, you can also access imo on your phone, and chat with all your buddies faster and easier than any native mobile app I have ever tried.

The developers of imo seem to have thought of everything here, and I for one, am excited to see what comes next.

Have you tried imo? What did you think? Please let us know in the comments.

I am going to do something a little differently in the post and not discuss a new product or a new technology. I want to talk to you about a company that I have been in contact with over the past few months. The company is Shape Services and they make some very innovative applications such as IM+, Mobiola Web Camera for Blackberry, and their newest addition, RDM+. Now, I have had the chance to try out all of these apps on different platforms, and they all pretty much rock, but like I said, I want to talk about the company as a whole and not just their products.

Shape Services has made a name for themselves in the industry with their award winning instant messaging software IM+, which works on multiple mobile platforms, including iPhone, Blackbery, Android, Windows Mobile, J2ME, and Symbian. It is one of the most useful apps I use on a regular basis, and what makes Shape Services such an amazing company is that they never rest. As you know I conducted a thorough review of the IM+ app on the iPhone and just days after my initial review, I was notified that a new version was released with some very serious enhancements. The new version includes an awesome Twitter interface and some other very important improvements. Today they released a newer version with push notifications, something only available as of iPhone OS 3.0.

Shape Services release new products more often than any other company I know of in this industry and each one manages to amaze with its innovation and implementation of new technologies. Another example of that is RDM+, which enables you to control your desktop from your iPhone. It took a little setting up and it is not perfect yet, but seeing my desktop on my iPhone and being able to perform almost any action from the iPhone blew my mind.

To me, one of the most important things I look at when encountering a new company is its staff and their responsiveness. I spoke about that with Snaptu, and it is true about Shape Services as well. I communicate with a member of their staff by the name of Elena Dyatlova on a regular basis, and she is always willing to help in any way possible, whether it be to answer questions, to let me know of a new product, or to put me in touch with support when necessary.

Shape Services impresses me in every possible way, and all I can say is if they keep pushing out new releases and products, they will continue to grow as the industry leading software developer they have become. If you have a phone of pretty much any kind, you should definitally go visit their site and see if they offer any applications that spark your interest.

-Hillel

While Social media in its newest formats takes up a lot of my time, I find that I do a lot less of other things I used to do, and this sadly includes blogging. I hope to fix that. However, one thing that did not diminish is my time on Instant messenger. IM still serves a purpose even Twitter cannot fill. Ever since I learned how to turn on a computer, I have been an IM junkie. So naturally, when I get a new phone/iPod, good IM software is one of the first things I search for.

The issue is that I have accounts on many different IM networks including AIM, MSN (although, it is just a matter of time before I stop using it because of all the IM spam), Gtalk, Yahoo messenger (I have like 3 contacts), and the newest addition (and a very important one) Facebook chat. So what I need from my iPod Touch is an app that supports all of those protocols and does it well. I have used apps like Fring, which is an awesome app for what it does (Voip and some IMing), I am a HUGE fan of Nimbuzz, although, lately, I am not sure if it is Facebook or Nimbuzz’s fault, they do not seem to be in cahoots with Zuckerberg.  I have also tried others like Truphone, which is primarily a VOIP app and it appealed to me less.

My latest app for IM is IM+. My first impression of the company is that they are an industry leader in this field, I see they are compatible for almost all platforms including iPhone, Java, Symbian,  Palm, Windows Mobile, and even Blackberry. My 2nd impression is that they do not spend enough on marketing, since in all the forums I have read, almost no one recommends their software as the best choice, and in my opinion, it is because they are not familiar with it. Shape Services, the company that makes IM+ are on the right path if they gave me the app to review, but they need to get their name out there more.

On to the app itself. Setup was seamless and even fun! It supports pretty much any IM protocol you can imagine. Here is the list: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, Gtalk, MySpace, and Facebook chat. Not only that, but they stay on top of their game and their next version will include Skype and…you guessed it…Twitter. OK, it has all the “standard” features including sending photos, location, and audio clips to contacts, and the IMing is easy and fun. You can of course add avatars for you or your friends and you can type on a spacious landscape keyboard, a very blessed feature.

However, hands down their coolest feature, which correct me if I am wrong, is unique to their app, is IM Push notifications. The lack of background apps on the iPhone is of course one of, if not the biggest disadvantages over other phones. Whether or not this issue will be “fixed” in iPhone 3.0 is up for debate. With IM+, you can have your IM running in the background for all intents and purposes. You can configure how long you want it to stay connected after you close the app, and during that time, you appear online to your buddies. If they send you an IM , it is sent to your email, from which you can choose to reply to the IM (converted back to IM automatically, how cool is that?) or open the app and reply. Very very cool feature, which separates it from its competition.

The ultimate IM app? Not so fast. Yea, it is a highly useful and extremely innovative app, but it is not without its bugs. Facebook chat worked for the first few days and I have not been able to connect ever since. The app says something about Facebook now requiring your birthday in order to connect and how you should press the “Support button” to input your birthday. When you press “Support”, it brings you to their FAQ, so yea, not feeling it. In addition,  I have sent in numerous bug reports on this issue, and gotten one response back, so I think they need to knock their service up a notch.

Bottom line is, this app has huge potential and I cannot wait for the next version. Shape Services were really nice and professional, and unlike too many app developers that send me their apps to review, knew how to write their emails in proper English. By the way, if you are a developer or anything else for that matter, and English is not your mother tongue, have someone else write your emails for you, it makes a pretty bad impression, when people get an email that makes no sense. In fact, I rarely respond to such emails.

Back to IM+, they are clearly a company that is not satisfied with the minimum, but rather try to push the limits with the technology they put into their software. I for one enjoyed working with them and hope soon to review more products of theirs, and specifically the IM+Blackberry version. By the way, if I was not clear until now, the answer is yes, it is worth buying it, $10 is a little steap but I will go out on a limb and say it is even worth $10.

-Hillel

Update:  Just got a tweet from my boyz over at Fring that they also have an “Always on” feature in their new release. Looks like Fring is back in the game! Thanks guys!

After a long three months of job searching using every available tool, looks like I have landed myself a position as a Content Manager at a Forex startup. At the risk of giving myself a huge jinx before I even start the job, I wanted to share with you my experience over the last three months, and how I reached the indisputable conclusion that social media is the way to go.

Over this extremely trying period of looking for my next job, I used pretty much every tool available to me. That includes the traditional job websites, as well as outsourcing companies, and placement agencies. I must have sent out a 100 CVs a week, each with a really impressive cover letter as well as a CV customized for the type of position for which I am applying. I will not say that was a total failure. I did get a handful of interviews from them, but nothing came of any of them. What seems to count more than a nice cover letter or CV is people’s opinion and recommendation of you as an individual. In addition to those tools, I used Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, emails to all my contacts as well as community lists, and let’s not forget a whole lot of IMing.

So in the hope that one or more of my readers will benefit from this information, I decided to share with you some of the tools that I found to be useful. Let’s start with the one that ended up closing the deal, Facebook (with a little IM help on the side). I know people today seem to think of Facebook as a waste of time and one of those things “I just do not need”, but my experience proved otherwise. Yes, it is true, Facebook can be a huge distraction and occupy a lot of your time, but the exposure that one can get using Facebook is unprecedented. At a simple click of a button, you can let hundreds if not thousands of people know you are looking for a job, and that is what I did.

What ended up happening with me is that, the fact that I was looking became known to pretty much everyone I ever knew, and an old friend of mine, who, the truth be told, would probably have found out via IM anyway, heard I was unemployed. Now, remember, I was working in the technology and cellular industry in my last job.

This particular friend works in the Forex industry, and has built various sites, one of them being a Digg style website for Forex news , as well as others for the Forex community. Well, he made a connection through one of his sites with an individual who has recently started a company and was looking for a content manager. He then made the match.

This story could never have happened five years ago, when there was no social media and all these tools were unavailable to us. Now, it is important to emphasize that this particular opportunity worked out for the best, but for every interview I got through the job sites, I got five from networking. Wherever I was, whoever I was talking to, I put aside the embarrassment of being laid off from my last company (although, in today’s economy, it is not so bad, who doesn’t know someone that lost their job recently? Check out this list.), and pretty much let anyone and everyone know I am looking.

Just to sum up, if you or someone you know are looking for a job in almost any field, I would recommend making use of the old fashion tools as well, but spending much more time developing your profile and networks on the various social media tools.

If you want to know more details about the exact manner in which I did this networking, or alternatively, if you want more information on the traditional side of things, the sites I used etc., you can message me on Facebook here, DM on Twitter here, write me on LinkedIn here, email me here. Or, you can also call me if you have my number, I have not stopped using that means of communication, YET.

-Hillel

As we wait for any big news from CES, and grieve about the almost total lack of any news at all from Macworld,  I thought I would tell you about a desktop application that is up there with the best I have ever used. It it not new, but its latest updates make it a real show-stopper. I am talking about the IM, Social Networking, and email aggregator for PC, Mac, or Linux; Digsby.

I have been using Digsby for months now and I have to say, it is almost flawless. Now, for me to say that about a program is a big deal, I am the kind of user that gets annoyed by the most trivial and ridiculous little quirks that 99% of people would never notice. Anyway, Digsby gives you a very clean and nice looking interface that includes the following services (sit down, it’s a long list):

• AIM: Oldie but goody
• MSN Messenger: Still a very good program even with the endless spam
• GTalk: Keeps getting better
• Yahoo Messenger: It serves its purpose, not great, but they get an A for effort
• ICQ: Never used it, but props for being the first of the gang
• Jabber: Never used it
• Facebook chat: Buggy but very useful

Those are the IM networks only, here is what else you have access to without even opening up your Web browser:

• Hotmail: Designed by Microsoft, but there are still people using it
• Gmail: Best email, period
• Yahoo Mail: Always getting better
• AOL/AIM Mail: No comment
• IMAP: Huge fan
• POP: Good to have

Now, for the big news, the latest Digsby update added the following social networking sites:

• Facebook: Will take some time till someone takes its place
• Twitter: Love it, love it, love it
• MySpace: Never used it, but very popular
• LinkedIn: The interface could be better, but very useful, I am told

OK, enough lists. Bottom line is, Digsby pretty much offers you every possible tool used to communicate on the Web (I guess Skype is missing, but then again, with so many VOIP options in the above lists, why use Skype?).

In addition to all the available services, the actual experience is absolutely perfect. Tabbed conversations, awesome skins, nicknames, reply from within popup notifications, Facebook and Twitter updates that do not disturb your work, and more and more. I can go on and on with Digsby’s amazing features, but I am sure you get the point.

Just to summarize, ever since I installed the latest update, I have not opened up a browser more than twice, and that was to check the news.  So, why is it not the perfect program? Well, if  I have to name something, it does not include CNN updates, yet!

-Hillel

After hitting the 10,000 apps and 300,000,000 downloads mark (yes, there were 300 million downloads so far), you would think there would be at least one app in the app store that offers an instant messaging experience somewhat similar to the desktop one. Take Digsby, for example. Besides its lack of Skype support, it is a user friendly, clean and fun interface that offers all the functionality one needs in a messaging application on a PC. What about the iPhone? Does such an app exist?

Digsby's Different Skins

There is definitely no shortage of messaging apps in the app store, I wouldn’t even say there was a shortage of free ones. There is however, a very severe shortage of IM apps that offer it all, until now. Let me explain.

The available free IM apps include Fring, IM+, Palringo,  AIM, Facebook, and Nimbuzz. Out of all of those apps, there is only one that offers all the needed capabilities of a good IM app.

So what does one need in an IM app to make it good? Here is a little list:

• Multi Platform Support: I need it to support AIM, MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, Facebook, and Skype.
• Landscape Keyboard: So much easier to type on.
• VOIP: It needs to not only support Skype, MSN, or GTalk chat, but why not take advantage of their VOIP capabilities as well?
• Separate Buddy Lists: I want to see my contacts separated by network and not all on one very long list.
• Easy to navigate interface: It has to be user friendly to be an app I would consider using.

OK so that is a short list of characteristics I am looking for in an IM app.

There is only one app that I have found to offer pretty much everything in that list; Nimbuzz.

Nimbuzz is a great app I discovered recently, after using Fring, IM+, and Palringo for a few weeks, and Nimbuzz has em all beat. It is not perfect yet, as there seems to be some buginess with Facebook chat sometimes working and sometimes not. I also occasionally get an AIM error that too many people are signing on at the same time, but it eventually signs me in.

Another issue I have with Nimbuzz is the login takes a little too long for my liking, but given all it offers, that is something I can deal with. I am really liking the quality of the audio when using the VOIP functionality via Skype, GTalk, or MSN, it is leagues above Fring or Truphone. The email integration is a little unclear to me, it notifies me when I have a new email in my Gmail account, but I cannot access the new message. Not getting that.

To sum up, I am really looking forward to the next Nimbuzz release, hopefully they’ll fix the minor issues and make this one of the most feature packed, fun to use apps in the app store. For me, Nimbuzz gets a 4.5/5. I am liking it.

-Hillel