Learned from Tom Boone at Library Laws that there’s a new cross-platform IM client out called InstantBird, “based on Mozilla technologies and Pidgin”. And it’s open source. It’s pretty spartan right now being on its first release, but worked right out of the box for me. Just enter your account details in the account wizard, and for Google Talk, use XMPP protocol and fill the username with your Google Mail e-mail address like this: “my.address@gmail.com/instantbird”. Then type “talk.google.com” in the entry “Connect server”.
Right now I don’t see any indication that someone on the other end is typing, and I don’t seem to be able to edit the names of the people in my contact list, and I can’t minimize to the clock tray, so it takes up space in my taskbar. But it does connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk and many others I don’t use, like MySpaceIM, GroupWise, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, etc.
Oh, and get this – Windows, OSX 10.4+ and Linux (2.2.14+)! I’ve only installed it on the Windows machine so far…