Most of us probably own at least one instant messaging account and a good majority of users own two or more. Combine that with social networking and email,  the number of services can be overwhelming. Luckily thanks to multi-protocol instant messenger clients, users can say good bye to clients that can only connect to one service. These clients can often connect to email services and social networking as well. First Class Flyer is a weekly series published every Friday comparing two or more free [...]

Google Talk (Jabber) features something known as invisibility which makes the user seem to be offline, but really is online. This is a popular feature among most IM networks. However, is it possible to figure out if someone is really offline or just using invisibility just to avoid talking to you on Google Talk? The answer is yes. Google Talk Chat with 'David'. He went invisible and then offline, which is indicated by the Red Error Messages. So how did I identify when David in the conversation [...]