A problem with instant messaging is that it can be tough to get the same screen name on all services you use. Most people these days choose to employ the use of a multi-protocol instant messaging program such as Digsby, Trillian, Miranda, Adium or Pidgin, and having all those different names can be aggravating for others to remember. You can, however, use your email address as your screen name for just about every single IM service there is.

Before telling you how this is done per each service, there are a few things to bear in mind.

The email address you choose as your screen name must be one that you own and use regularly. In other words, don’t use your work email address.

Don’t use an email address that is "tied" to your ISP, because at some point in the future you may change ISPs.

Try to use an address that doesn’t have any dots, dashes or underscores in it. If you can’t do that, that’s understandable, but be aware that some IM services won’t permit usernames that contain characters like that.

How to register your email address as your screen name in..

MSN/Windows Live

1. Go to www.live.com.
2. Click the Sign in link at top right.
3. Click the Sign up button on the left.
4. The first field will be Use your e-mail address. Proceed from there.

AIM

1. Go to www.aim.com.
2. Click Get a screen name at top right.
3. Choose Use an existing email address as a Screen Name. Proceed from there.

Google Talk

This one takes a few hoops to jump thru to get this working, but can be done.

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. Click the Sign in link at top right.
3. Click Create an account now at bottom right.
4. Use your current email address as your screen name on the next page and continue sign-up.

The hoops you have to jump thru at this point are that after you’ve created your Google account, you will need to also create a Gmail account in order to use the Google Talk service. Once you’ve finished signing up, go to www.google.com/accounts and add in the Gmail service. Yes, you will have to create an Gmail account "on top of" your Google account, but both will be "tied" together afterward. Then people can start sending you instant messages via your Google Talk account.

Yahoo!

This IM service doesn’t allow the creation of accounts using your email address, however, being that MSN/Live accounts and Yahoo! accounts can interact with each other easily, all anybody has to do is send you messages to your MSN/Live account via the Yahoo! service and you will receive them, so the creation of an additional Yahoo! screen name isn’t necessary.

Advantages of using your email address as your screen name

1. It’s guaranteed to be available.

In order to use an email address as a screen name, it must be validated on sign-up by sending a confirmation email to that address. What this means is that the only person who could use your email address as a screen name is you, so it’s guaranteed to be available.

2. It eliminates a lot of confusion.

One screen name for all your IM services you use is mighty convenient. It’s also easy not only for you but for the people you chat with.

3. It makes it easy for people to know what your email address is.

Your email address is your screen name, so those you chat with don’t even have to remember what your email address is, because it’s already in their contact/buddy list.

Disadvantages of using your email address as your screen name

1. It makes it easy for people to know what your email address is.

Yes, this is listed as an advantage but it can serve to be a disadvantage, because maybe there’s certain folks you don’t want knowing your email address.

2. Slight possibility of confusion.

If your screen name is you@hotmail.com, and a contact wants to communicate with you over AIM, you may have to convince them, "Yes, that is my screen name. Seriously. It does work. It’s not just MSN/Live." People aren’t used to seeing a screen name as an email address.

3. You will have to tell everybody to switch over to your new IM screen name(s).

There’s no way around this unfortunately. However when you do get everybody to know your new screen names, it’s well worth it.

Why bother doing this at all?

Ultimately it’s the most convenient way to handle your email and IM communications. Everything is centralized around one screen name. The best part is that you don’t have to radically shift around anything. You can still use the same email and the same IM clients you’ve always used. The only thing changing here is your screen name and nothing else.

And as stated above, nobody on your buddy/contact list has to hunt for your email address. They know what it is right up front.

In fact, if you used this in concert with your social networking profiles (which all have the ability to find contacts by email address,) this even furthers the convenient use of your email address as your one screen name.

Who would have guessed that the email address was the best screen name all along?

AIM is the primary instant messenger I use. Out of all the IM services I’ve used over the years, it is the most reliable. In addition, it runs flawlessly on any operating system. Whether you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux, you can run AIM.

The latest client offering on the Windows platform is AIM 7 Beta 2.

Short review:

It’s awesome. If you use AIM, get it.

Long review:

This is best given in points.

• If you run multiple computers at home, you can run it on each computer at the same time. Previously I was only able to do this with AIM Lite.
• Following in the footsteps of AIM Express, messages from those not on your contact list will prompt a window asking if you want to chat with them or not. Previously this wasn’t there.
• Linked accounts work great. In addition, you can have them all set to invisible on login instead of having to set each individually.
• The interface is a whole lot cleaner and a lot less "cartoony" (something Yahoo and Windows Live suffer from in abundance).
• "Me" tab makes it super-easy to manage blocked users in just two clicks (you had to really dig for this previously).
• Integrates with Facebook and Twitter easily with new "Lifestream" tab.
• Integrates with Delicious and YouTube.
• Runs light and doesn’t eat up memory.
• I tested on my XP laptop and Win 7 PC. Runs great on both.

AIM 7 is full of awesome stuff. If you use AIM, you will really like this client.

Some sites make it easy (more or less) to delete your account if you don’t feel like using it any longer. Others however make it exceedingly difficult.

Recently I was going thru my password manager and realized there were a ton of accounts I simply didn’t use anymore, so I figured I’d get rid of them. Some I was successful with, while others.. not so much.

Deleting a Gmail account

Google has their services set up in such a way where Gmail is a product attached to your primary Google account. For example, FeedBurner, Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs, Google Alerts and so on are all products.

You have a few options here. You can either delete just the Gmail account, or delete the Google account entirely.

• Go to https://www.google.com/accounts (and yes, the https must be present).
• After logging in, click the Edit link next to My products.
• If you want to delete Gmail alone, click Remove Gmail permanently.
• If you want to close the entire account, click Close account and delete all services and info associated with it.

Deleting a Hotmail account

Microsoft is similar to Google in the respect that Hotmail is deemed a product attached to your Windows Live ID.

• Login to your Hotmail/MSN/Live account at http://login.live.com
• Click Close account
• You may be told that the system is unable to do it and that you have to "Close your Microsoft account". Go ahead and do it.

Is the Hotmail account truly closed at that point? No. The account will be treated as if you haven’t logged in for a few months. After a few days, all information will be removed, so I guess that’s the closest definition of "closed" you can get with a Windows Live ID.

Closing a Yahoo account

Yahoo makes it easy. Follow the steps here.

Closing an AIM account

I could not find a way to close an AOL/AIM account. After a Google search, it would appear the only way to "deactivate" one is to not login to it for six months. Not an elegant solution by any means, but it’s at least something.

Finding links to close other types of web accounts

All web services should make closing your account easy, but unfortunately they don’t. Everybody does it differently. But there are a few common threads.

• Names: It can be called "Close Account", "Remove Account", "Delete Account", "Terminate Account", etc.
• Links: I’ve seen several instances where the "Close My Account" link is black and non-underlined making it look like plain text when in fact it’s a link.
• FAQ: Try searching the FAQ for the web service you’re trying to close.
• Profile: Sometimes the link to close an account will be listed under "Profile".

If you cannot close the account, what do you do?

You will run into some instances where there is no way to close the account (like Identi.ca and AIM). Chances are the reason you want to close it out to begin with is to stop getting those stupid emails from the service. The easiest thing to do is to edit the profile and change it to use a throw-away address. Once done you won’t get anymore crap from them in your email.

Tiny applications run faster because they require far less computing power. They’re useful for several types of computer users.

If you run a slower computer box, the less resource an app uses, the better.

If you have a slower internet connection, smaller apps that access the internet typically make far less demands on bandwidth.

If you’re a gamer, the game is your "heavy" app in the front, so using light apps in the background allow the game to run more smoothly.

Here are 5 of the better tiny apps.

AIM Lite

This is for use of the AIM messenger service.

Available for both Windows and Mac. I use this personally. Tab support, linked account support, secure login option, and an extremely small footprint.

Miranda

This is also an instant messenger but supports many different protocols such as Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, ICQ, Jabber (Google Talk) and more.

Unfortunately this client doesn’t do multiple accounts per protocol easily, however that will be coming soon with the next release. If you only have one account per protocol however, this will work just fine.

For those with really old computers or old OS virtual machines, the ANSI version of this software (available directly on the download page) will work on Windows 95 and 98.

JBMail

This is a very compact email client and will easily run off a USB stick. In fact it’s so small it will even run off a floppy disk (assuming anyone uses those things anymore). It does POP and SMTP, secure login support, has junk mail filtering and more.

It is a Windows app but runs just fine under WINE for those of the Linux persuasion.

WinSCP

This is a small and light FTP client that supports traditional FTP and Secure FTP as well. If you tried FileZilla but wanted something less resource intensive and faster, WinSCP is what you want.

0irc

The 0 is a zero and not the letter O.

0irc is the lightest GUI-based IRC client for Windows I’ve ever seen. It barely takes up any space at all at only 67k. Make sure to read the README so you know how to configure it first (and that’s really, really easy).

More people these days are getting away from instant messenger programs and using the in-browser way, because there really isn’t too much reason to use an IM app these days. Years ago a large chunk of the IM functionality was provided by the application, but that’s not the case anymore. You can do voice, webcam, manage your buddy/contact list and just about everything else right from the browser.

With web-based IM you have from-service and multi-protocol.

Multi-Protocol

The one most people know is Meebo. It has a fantastic interface and is super-easy to set up and use. However there’s also eBuddy,ILoveIM, IMhaha, IMUnitive, KoolIM, mabber, MSN2Go, radiusIM and Wablet.

Needless to say you’ve got a lot of choice.

Do you have a review of one of the above? Leave a comment. I haven’t had the time to test all the above, so if you’ve got a few moments to spare, let us know what you think of one or more of the above.

From-Service

These are web-based versions of IM from the service providers themselves.

Yahoo: http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/
Windows Live: http://messidog.live.com or http://webmessenger.msn.com
AIM: http://www.aim.com/aimexpress.adp

Here are the rating from best to worst:

Best: AIM

AIM has updated their web interface and said honestly it’s the best there is. Flash-based, smooth animations, no weirdness with extraneous pop-ups (other than just one for the IM window itself), in-window tabbed conversations, familiar friendly sounds – this one has got the works. If you use AIM you will take to this like a fish to water.

Good: Yahoo

This looks very similar to the Yahoo Messenger app itself. However the problem is that it takes up the whole browser and I could not find any way to "detach" the IM. But other than that this is a solid performer. It has tabs, very friendly interface and a simple clean design. If you use Yahoo Messenger you’ll definitely want to try this.

Worst: Windows Live

Where Microsoft excels with it’s Windows Live Messenger client, their web messenger is a joke. It’s absolutely awful. The "messidog" address almost never works. You’ll get "An error has occurred" and be left flat on attempt to login.

The other address does work, but the interface looks like MSN Messenger 7. That’s bad. Bear in mind the current client is version 2009 (version 9). It’s also plagued with pop-up warnings left and right. This is a web messenger designed for 2002, not 2009. I have no idea why Microsoft keeps such a horrible web IM around like this. They’ve made such a huge effort to make all the Live services better and more friendly but haven’t touched the IM portion whatsoever. Very strange.

You’re far better off just using one of the multi-protocol services above.

What’s your take? App or Web?

Have IM web apps come far enough to make you give up your IM client or are there specific features that keep you "local", so to speak? Let us know.

Sometimes you may sign up for some type of service on the internet (instant messaging, social networking, etc.) that creates a public profile. And maybe later on you forgot to delete it. This could work against you later on especially if you have posted things in the past you forgot about.

See video below for more details.

AOL Instant Messenger, better known as simply AIM, is my preferred way of instant messaging simply due to the fact it’s the most reliable chat network. Out of all the things AOL does wrong, AIM is the only thing they do right.

Windows Live (formerly MSN) and Yahoo both have routine small outages on their networks that can get really irritating really quickly – but this doesn’t happen on AIM. Ever.

And for those that say "What about Google Talk?", yes, GTalk’s Jabber way of doing things is extremely reliable but unfortunately doesn’t have as much of an established presence like AIM does.

AIM Lite is an AIM chat client released the AIM team themselves. It is available for both Windows and Mac. AIM Lite one of the absolute fastest and lightest graphical clients I’ve ever used. The fastest I’ve ever used was Miranda, but AIM Lite comes darn close.

For those who are all about speed (or if you just have a slower computer) and use AIM, I strongly recommend getting AIM Lite.

If you like the software, see the plugins available. These plugins add in features like sound notification, toaster pop-ups (the good kind of pop-up) and a few other options.

1. It’s not Microsoft.

2. It’s not Apple.

3. It’s not Yahoo.

4. It works on any OS using almost any IM client you can think of (AIM client itself, AIM Lite, Trillian, Pidgin, Kopete, Adium, Digsby, Miranda, etc. etc. etc.)

5. Jabber still sucks.

6. MSN/Live still doesn’t work right and disconnects randomly.

7. Yahoo does the same frickin’ thing.

8. For any IM client introduced, AIM connectivity is always first (funny that).

9. It’s stupidly easily to develop your own AIM client.

10. The block feature actually works like it’s supposed to.

11. As far as from-service clients are concerned, AIM is the least heavy (Yahoo Messenger is ultra-bloated as is Windows Live Messenger).

12. AIM has the least service outages (how often has your AIM disconnected.. if ever?)

13. Contact lists (including block lists) “carry over” easily from client to client, computer to computer, OS to OS.

14. SSL secure chat actually works and works well.