Many of you have webmail accounts other than your primary email account that you don’t login to very often. This can result in an account deactivating itself due to inactivity. Granted, you can reactivate the account easily, but you probably lost any mail you had in there, and that’s annoying.

Keeping webmail accounts ‘alive’ is simple – use an instant messenger. Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail all have IM services; you can use those to keep accounts from accidentally going inactive from inactivity, even if you don’t use instant messaging.

Don’t feel like installing software? Use the web-based versions and just leave a tab open. See ‘Web-based IM’ below for links on what you can use.

Single-protocol IM software

Single-protocol only:

• AIM
• Windows Live Messenger
• Yahoo! Messenger
• Google Talk
• aMSN

Multi-protocol IM software

• Pidgin
• Adium (Mac only)
• Miranda
• Trillian
• Digsby

Web IM

• Meebo
• Trillian
• eBuddy
• web.im (Yahoo! Web Messenger)
• Fring (smartphones only)
• Nimbuzz (smartphones only)

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