I love Adium, which is a Mac multi-network IM client. Today saw the release of Adium X 1.3, which added some essential features, which have been missing for some time.

One of these missing features which this version adds is particularly useful for me: MSN personal messages. MSN is the most popular IM protocol in the UK and this, therefore, is particularly important. Ever since my switch to OS X, I’ve been missing the ability to see people’s personal messages (whether it be their status, their juicy gossip or their wit). In fact, the only way I could view them before was using a single-network MSN client, like aMSN or Microsoft Messenger, or this dated, homebrewed and unreliable custom build of Adium. Adium achieves this by using the msn-pecan plug-in for its library, libpurple (the library it was in common with Pidgin).

Another useful option is adding a search option to contact lists, allowing you to quickly get someone’s email address or quickly provide the IM address of a buddy to another buddy.

The new version also adds support for Facebook IM, MobileMe, several new icons, redesigns the ‘Get Info’ option on contacts to be more Inspector-like and performance upgrades.

Adium 1.3 supports Adium’s position as the prime OS X chat client and adds some much needed features and in general just makes Adium much more intuitive.

Adium 1.3 will run on a Mac with OS X 10.4.0 or higher.

(Direct download link)

i’m is an initiative which Microsoft started back in March which aimed to generate money for charity. All it required was for American (yes… it was limited to America) users to place a code in their display name which generates this emoticon: .

Every time a conversation involving an American user (either sender, recipient or both) takes place where this icon is present in a user’s display name, a small donation is made to charity.

There are 10 different codes to make the icon, each code raising money for a different charity. The codes are (charities they benefit are in brackets): *red+u (American Red Cross), *bgca (Boys & Girls Clubs of America), *hsus (Humane Society of the United States), *naf (National [as in the United States] AIDS Fund), *mssoc (National MS Society), *9mil (ninemillion.org), *sierra (Sierra Club), *help (StopGlobalWarming.org), *komen (Susan G. Komen for the Cure) and *unicef (UNICEF).

The beauty of i’m is that whilst many people won’t be aware that by placing the ‘i’m’ icon in their display name that they’re helping charity is that they do it and Microsoft will still donate money.

Whilst it’s a shame it’s limited to the United States, I think this is quite a nice act of charity by Microsoft who have already donated nearly US$100,000… although they promise that they’ll donate a minimum of US$100,000 (or so Wikipedia their presspack reports) to each charity.

Microsoft haven’t said how much they’re paying per conversation and US$100,000 is a pittance to them I guess every little helps.

It would be nice to see that US$100,000 raised so far to be multiplied by at least 10… but I guess it’s Microsoft and some things won’t ever happen…

Tags: microsoft, windows live, msn messenger, i’m, im