Recently, I have uninstall few of my favourite application in my pc. That includes Gaim, XChat and also RSSOwl.
For most of you know, Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client which I mostly use just only to chat with my Yahoo! buddies. XChat is an IRC (chat) program which I use sometimes to chat with my friend over at IRC Network. Back in the late 90′s, I use to be an IRC Monkey. RSSOwl is an applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites, which most of you understand as reading RSS or Atom feeds. Rather than visiting the website or blogs directly, using a newsreader is another way to view the content of the subscribe sites or blogs.
This 3 applications are a very great tools but unfortunately I found a better application which is web based that have the same functionality by just having them right in your web browser.
What did I do?
Firstly, I replace Gaim with Meebo. Meebo is a web based IM application that support Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and even Jabber protocol. Another point worth noting is the technology behind the application, which is AJAX. And the best part is no software download. You can logged in anytime, anywhere, as long as you have a web browser.
We’re three folks working to bring IM to Web 2.0. Hopefully this lets you get all of your IMing done in one place and makes it easier too.
Second application is XChat. For this I need to take advantage of Mozilla Firefox extension feature. The extension is called ChatZilla. ChatZilla is a clean, easy to use and very extensible IRC client. By default, to launch ChatZilla you need to go your browser menu bar tools>ChatZilla. Since I use Bookmark Toolbar, I add chrome://chatzilla/content/chatzilla.xul bookmark link to the toolbar.
Finally, the last application that I replace is RSSOwl. As a web geek, I subscribe to many sites and blogs. I was introduced to RSSOwl by a friend which at that time I use Liferea to read all my subscribe feeds. Can’t exactly describe why I switched from Liferea to RSSOwl but I think it have something to do with its feature. The bad side of using RSSOwl is that it is JAVA based which really a problem since I have a slow pc. But for some important feeds, the use of Mozilla Firefox Live Bookmark feature really come in handy. Feeds from major security sites, slashdot, an OpenSource application that I use which I have to kept an eye always is put at Mozilla Firefox Bookmark Toolbar. Since Google introduced Google Reader to the public, it really hit the jackpot. I’d move all my favourite reading feed from rssOwl OPML to Google Reader.
There you have it, not only I save up my harddrive space but it really keep me thinking that 1 application can be use to extend the use of another application which also can minimize your pc memory resources. Up until now, I have no problem using these 3 wonderful application.
But you should keep in mind that you can’t expect much from these application. The important part is that it work like you wanted it to be in a much simpler and minimum way.