When I saw an ad on a Web site for Digsby, I clicked on it and was surprised to find the best tool out there (I believe) for managing multiple accounts from one location — Gmail, GChat (Google Talk), Twitter, Facebook (including Fbook chat) and AIM are all accessed easily through Digsby. (See screenshots here)
The program is computer-based, but small pop-up windows appear at the bottom left hand corner of my screen to inform me of new emails as well as IMs and Twitters updates. With IMs, I can even respond to the person using the pop-up window, meaning I don’t have to pull the program to the front in order to respond.
One of the drawbacks that I haven’t figured out how to fix yet, is that I get the pop-up notifications any time someone gets a wall post on Facebook or some other mundane action. So someone from Digsby just pointed out in the comment section that I can indeed edit my accounts to determine what types of popup messages I want to receive. I went through and deleted many of the popup messages for Facebook and was also able to have Twitter check updates more often (every 2 minutes, instead of the default 3). I also changed the default for checking my Gmail account from every 5 minutes to every 1 minute, because I’m obsessive compulsive when it comes to my e-mail.
Digsby also allows me to reach a whole new level of Facebook stalking since I can see everything any of my friends have done recently as well as the time of that action.
The only downside to the program is that, since I use two computers, I have to remember to shut off Digsby so that its only open and active on one computer at a time, otherwise I can risk missing parts of conversations, which happened earlier today when I missed three lines a friend typed (I noticed them hours later on my desktop upstairs).
A few of the people on Twitter that I’ve mentioned the program to seem to have taken to it as I commonly see ’sent via Digsby’ popping up on the feeds now. I use Twitter more than Facebook and the program works well by allowing me not only to update my Twitter status, but by also allowing me to reply to anyone, or even see my archives, replies, favorites and direct messages.
You can disable various types of facebook pop-ups via the ‘advanced’ settings for that account. So, go to Prefs -> Accounts (default page) -> Click ‘Edit’ on your Facebook account -> Click Advanced -> uncheck whatever you’d like (probably “friends’ wall posts”).
Thanks, I hadn’t noticed that. Slightly stalker-ish that Digsby finds me when I blog about it, but helpful.