Archive for Digsby
Digsby Review- Faster & Feature Rich
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Digsby
If you’re a social maven with multiple email accounts, social media sites and IM accounts, give Digsby a try. If you use more than one computer, get a Digsby account and then you’ll never be parted from all your networking sites. Just sign into your Digsby account (requires a software install), and find out what’s happening across all your social networks.
Digsby rolled out a huge update in June, 2009. They promise they are lighter weight (consume about 50% less resources), and they’ve fixed many bugs.
I’ve had it on my work laptop for many months and just decided to install it on the family computer with the Windows 7 RC. It seems to be really snappy with Windows 7 on my older Dell.
Digsby seems to be covering all their bases with the social networks, email & IM. Here’s a list of what can be aggregated for you:
Social Networking
Facebook MySpace Twitter LinkedIn
Gmail Yahoo Mail Live/Hotmail AOL Mail IMAP POP
IM
Yahoo MSN Google Talk AIM ICQ Jabber
What’s To Like
- As long as I have Digsby installed, I can simply sign in once and have instant access to all my social media accounts
- With the addition of LinkedIn, Twitter, POP & IMAP mail, I can truly have everything aggregated in one desktop sidebar.
- I like the ability to turn on and off notifications – I usually leave them off as it’s too distracting to see so many pop-ups. But if you’re waiting for a particular message, it would be helpful.
- It is more lightweight on my systems – good news since I’ve got multiple things running at all times.
- Ability to post updates right from Digsby. I save some screen real estate and resources because I don’t have to log into LinkedIn or Twitter to see what’s happening or to post an update. This is a big plus.
Not To Like
I didn’t care for all the add-ons being pushed on me during the install. The Freeze search, the video player and maybe something else. For the unsuspecting person, I’m sure they just hit accept for all these things and then wonder where it came from. I wish this could be eliminated – but perhaps this is how they keep it free.
Still Figuring Out
POP Mail. Specifically I’m looking at getting an Outlook mail account from one computer to work on a different computer. I understand that if I have Outlook installed on both computers, but with different email accountson each computer, I can’t pull up an email. However, I can view a list of emails currently on that computer with a short preview.
Reading the Digsby forums, people were asking for Digsby to support accessing their webmail instead of a desktop client (like Outlook). They said that they had added this feature, so I looked in the advanced settings and saw that there is a place to cut and paste your webmail URLs (one for in-box and one for the compose box). I tried this, however, it crashed my Firefox browser! I got a Java applet error.
I will try it again and try it with IE to see if I get a different result. If any Digsby users out there are reading this – would like to get your experiences. I’ll post an update next week after I work on it more.
Digsby a Business Tool or a Distraction?
Posted by: | CommentsA couple of weeks ago, we began exploring using Digsby as a chat aggregator. This week, we’ll look at how/if using Digsby can help a small business owner, (in my case, a VA) be more productive.
A touted feature is the ability to monitor multiple email accounts right from Digsby. This could be helpful if I have responsibility for monitoring email for my clients. However, it could be a big distraction as well. I’m working along for one client when I see an email for another and then I get off task. What do you all think? Here are the features from the web site:
- Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from Digsby.
- Get popup notifications when new email arrives. Clicking a popup takes you right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts.
- The email InfoBox gives you a snapshot of your unread messages with just one click
- Perform actions such as “Mark as Read” or “Report Spam” right from the email InfoBox.
- Send emails to your friends right from the IM window. The email is sent directly from any account digsby is tracking for you.
How do some of you use IM with your businesses? What does it do to your productivity? If you use it for business, then Digsby seems like a great aggregator. If you have friends/clients with multiple IM accounts, it will combine them into one identity to reduce clutter. You can send SMS messages from Digsby (but you can from Yahoo as well). You can rename your contacts to their actual names so you don’t have to remember the cryptic names people sometime have. Scrolling your mouse down your list of buddies instantly shows everyone’s status. As mentioned in a previous post, you can also monitor your social networking sites and conduct chats from Digsby.
Your Digsby account follows you from computer to computer (although you’ll still have to download software to each computer). Just login and your previous customizations will be there for you. Speaking of customization, Digsby offers a huge assortment of skins, colors, etc. to make your ‘user experience’ rich. Take a look here at all the screen shots and customization options.
So if you are using IM/chat, I’d like to get your feedback of what you use and why. Is it helpful for multiple clients, or do you use it for personal use? Currently, I’m just using Yahoo Messenger and it works for me. There are quite a few features with Yahoo that Digsby doesn’t have…but that’s another blog topic!
Facebook Chat from your Desktop–Using Digsby!
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I blogged a couple of weeks ago on how Facebook added a chat feature where you can see how many of your friends are on-line from within Facebook and initiate a chat with them.
Just recently, I saw that Digsby (a chat aggregator, along the lines of Meebo), has a feature where you can chat with your Facebook friends without being logged into Facebook! Check out the screenshot below. Not only can you use Digsby as a chat aggregator, you can also add Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to Digsby to consolidate and manage most of your social networking sites in one place! They say other social networking sites are coming soon.
Here are the social networking features Digsby offers:
- Stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace account (other network support coming soon).
- Receive alerts of events such as new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc.
- The social network InfoBox gives you a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to. Everything from new photos, to status updates, to upcoming birthdays is just a click away.
- Set your Facebook and Twitter status right from Digsby.
Go to the web site and and download to your desktop. Digsby also has some other cool features that we will explore at a later time. Enjoy!
