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Palm Pixi Needs a Dusting of Speed

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:52:55 +0000

Since the debut of the Palm Pre in June, Palm has talked about the value of the device’s webOS operating system, which offers fast responsiveness, multitasking, universal search and smart synchronization. These features are accessed using delightful multitouch gestures like swiping with a fingertip. So it makes perfect sense that Palm would want to expand its family of products running this great mobile operating system.

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This week, Palm (PALM) introduced a second device with webOS: the Palm Pixi (palm.com/pixi). This is a stripped-down version of the Pre and it costs $100 (after a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year service contract) compared with the $150 Pre. Walmart.com is currently selling the Pixi for even less—$50 (http://3.ly/oSE). Both the Pixi and the Pre run on Sprint’s (S) network.

I’ve been testing the Pixi and I’ve found that the physical differences from the Pre are acceptable variations that most people won’t mind and may not even detect. These include a smaller, lower-resolution screen, a two-megapixel camera rather than the Pre’s three-megapixel camera and stationary keyboard instead of one that slides out. The Pixi isn’t as pebble-shaped as the Pre, but its back cover is rounded to fit comfortably in a hand. And like the Pre, it has an eight-gigabyte storage capacity and it’s thin and light enough to forget in a jeans pocket or to comfortably hold up to your ear during phone calls.

The Pixi’s internal changes are much tougher to accept. It lacks Wi-Fi capability and so must rely solely on Sprint’s 3G network for its connection, which I found to be frustratingly slow at times. This littler phone also runs on a weaker processor than the Pre, a decision that Palm says helped cut costs and make the Pixi small. But this processor’s speed is slow enough to notice immediately and it robs webOS of its lightning-fast speed. The Pixi’s progress indicator—a spinning, white circle—appeared on my screen too often.

The $100 Palm Pixi is like a mini version of the Pre. A $70 Touchstone accessory (right) magnetically holds the Pixi as it charges.

Like its super-smartphone competitors, including Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) newer BlackBerrys and Google’s (GOOG) Android phones, the Palm Pixi taps into a virtual store from which users can download apps for the device. But Palm’s App Catalog currently holds fewer than 400 apps and roughly 80 of those aren’t yet configured for the Pixi. This means that people who buy the $100 Pixi can choose from just around 300 apps for download, compared with the 100,000 apps available for Apple’s $100 iPhone 3G.

Some apps come preloaded on the Pixi, like Facebook and NFL Mobile Live. I downloaded others, including Pandora radio, Tweed for Twitter and a game called Word Whirl Lite. I logged into my Pandora account and played songs from one of my personalized radio stations while reading through email. A tiny “P” icon at the bottom of the Pixi’s screen notified me that Pandora was running. Other notifiers, like new emails or instant messages, appear at the bottom as well.

If you aren’t familiar with webOS, it’s easy to learn. Functions are designed to be more people-centric rather than program-centric. For example, I can look at a name in Contacts and see how I’m linked to that person—like through Facebook or Google Talk. If I want to start an instant-messaging conversation with that person, I can do so right there rather than opening AIM or Google Talk first to find a person’s name and then initiate conversation. I logged onto the Pixi with a Google account and the device was smart enough to also synchronize data from my Google Talk, Google Calendar and Gmail contacts.

The Card View, a display of all the programs that are simultaneously running at any given time, can be exposed with a simple, upward finger swipe starting below the screen. To close a program, simply touch it with a finger and toss it upward, as if throwing it away. This is one of the most satisfying gestures in webOS. And it’s a good thing, too, because Pixi users will need to use it more often than they did with the Pre. Palm suggests running only seven programs at once for the best performance, rather than the 10 you can leave opened on the Pre.

But my Pixi stuttered with just five programs—sometimes fewer—opened. Simple tasks like opening an email or searching for an app in the App Catalog were painfully slow. I received an email containing one digital photo, and the process of opening just the email—not even the photo—took about 10 seconds. When I finally opened the email and its photo, I saved it to my Pixi and tapped on a menu option to upload it to Facebook. But five minutes later, the spinning progress indicator was still on my Pixi’s screen and I gave up. I tried again and the same thing happened. Finally, on the third try, my photo posted to Facebook.

As was the case for the Palm Pre, the Pixi can be charged by plugging into a normal AC adaptor or by resting it on the Touchstone, a $70 accessory that, with the help of a special back cover that snaps onto the Pixi, magnetically holds this device as it charges. A handful of stylish “Artist Series” back covers will sell on Palm.com for $50 each and will ship in early December.

The Pixi’s 2.6-inch screen has a 320×400 resolution, which is a step down from the Pre’s 3.1-inch, 320×480-resolution screen. Palm estimates the Pixi’s battery lasts for five hours of talk time, the same as the Pre, but for 350 hours of standby time—or 50 more hours than the Pre.

The Palm Pixi’s keyboard is tiny but sufficient. People who are used to BlackBerry or even iPhone keyboards might be irked that the Pixi keyboard doesn’t have built-in shortcuts like holding down a key to capitalize it or pressing the space bar twice to add a period to the end of a sentence.

Like its predecessor, the Pixi has a designated Gesture Area just beneath its screen where users can swipe a fingertip for quickly navigating through screens, like swiping right-to-left to go back a screen. Unlike the Pre, the Pixi doesn’t have a silver button below its screen that immediately takes users to Card View, but I didn’t miss this button.

Though the Palm Pixi is $50 less than the Palm Pre, its downgraded performance doesn’t make that dollar savings worth it.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

IPod to Reach Out and Touch Someone

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Apple’s iPhone has changed the game since its debut almost two years ago — building a powerful platform for on-the-go Web browsing and applications, in addition to making cellphone calls. Just a few months after the iPhone appeared, Apple (AAPL) introduced the very similar iPod Touch, which didn’t get as much attention, perhaps because its name understates the scope of its features.

The Touch resembles the iPhone, only thinner, with the same multitouch screen, fast Web browser, iPod media player and ability to run almost all of the 35,000 apps in Apple’s App Store. It doesn’t have a camera, or a few other iPhone features, and it can’t connect to cellphone networks, relying instead on Wi-Fi for its Internet connection.

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The Touch has caught on: Apple recently indicated that it has sold 16 million of them. One reason for the popularity is that its freedom from a phone company eliminates pricey monthly bills. But the Touch can’t easily make voice calls right out of the box. So this week, I tested ways to make the Touch even more like the iPhone: apps that use the Internet to make phone calls.

Three Apps to Test

I successfully tested three apps that can be downloaded free of charge from Apple’s App store — Skype, Fring and Truphone. Skype gave me the best connection, and my friends wouldn’t have known I was using it unless I told them. (Skype’s app is popular, with 2.8 million downloads in just four weeks.) Fring and Truphone let users make calls using Skype’s service within their apps, and they also run other programs like AIM and MSN Messenger. But Fring’s phone calls didn’t sound as clear, and I had technical difficulties with Truphone.

The downside to using these apps on an iPod Touch is that you must be connected to a Wi-Fi network. For a lot of people who work and live in areas surrounded by wireless networks, this won’t be a problem most of the time. But in those moments when mobility comes into play — like driving in a car — you’ll miss having a steady line through a phone carrier. You also can’t use these apps to make 911 emergency calls.

Another negative is that third-party applications can’t run in the background on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This means you can’t use a Touch for browsing the Web or reading email while waiting for a call from a friend via Skype or Fring. Fring offers an option that emails you when friends call or message, so you can sign on and call them back. Truphone has built-in voicemail. Skype doesn’t currently offer a notification feature.

(The next version of the iPhone OS is supposed to include notifications, which could improve the usability of these apps.)

The Touch comes in three models: an eight-gigabyte version for $229; a 16-gigabyte for $299; and a 32-gigabyte for $399. Because the Touch doesn’t have a built-in microphone, you must use something like the iPhone Stereo Headset, which costs $29 and has a microphone in its cord.

Skype Plans

Free Skype accounts, which can be used for making calls with all three apps, take just a few minutes to set up. And calls from one Skype user to another are free. Skype calls to landlines or cellphones are relatively cheap. Skype Credit, a pay-as-you-go plan, charges 2.1 cents a minute in the U.S.; Skype Subscription is a flat monthly fee that costs $2.95 when used for calls made to and from the U.S. A monthly fee of $5.95 gets you unlimited calling to one country, and $12.95 a month pays for unlimited calls to 42 countries.

The Skype, Fring, and Truphone apps let you easily import contact names and numbers from your iPod Touch. They also enable instant messaging between you and your friends. Delightful sounds indicate incoming messages and calls, and these can be heard even when the headset isn’t plugged in — as long as you put the Touch down without closing the app.

I had the most success with the Skype app. My Skype-to-landline calls sounded perfect to my boss on the other end. Skype-to-cell and Skype-to-Skype calls sounded good, but weren’t always as clear; I used my Skype account to call a friend in New Orleans on her Skype account, and I heard echoing a couple times during our 30-minute chat. Skype says this could be attributed to the fact she was on a laptop.

Fring calls made using Skype — to landlines, cellphones, and other Skype contacts — weren’t as good as the Skype app. Friends’ voices sounded slightly shaky and muffled. This kind of thing isn’t the end of the world in a quick chat, but could be a real burden during an important call. Fring offers a long list of add-ons, letting you sign in to various accounts all within the same app. These include Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google (GOOG) Talk, Twitter, Yahoo (YHOO), and AIM.

Technical Difficulties

Truphone calls to landlines and cellphones sounded a bit fuzzy. Truphone is a service unto itself, like Skype, with free calls between Truphone users, pay-as-you-go plans and monthly plans. Like Fring, Truphone enables use of other programs within its app, like AIM and Yahoo Messenger. And it includes free voicemail. But the app didn’t always work for me.

A feature in all three apps lets you call an automated voice test line so you can hear how you sound before calling others.

These iPod Touch apps aren’t perfect, and the next version of the iPhone OS may let them can run more productively in the background. But making calls from the iPod Touch is a pretty cool experience when it works well, and free or low-price plans are an attractive alternative to cellphone carriers.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

The App Test: Rating Programs for Google's G1

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:30:02 +0000

Today, people interested in seeing the first Google-branded consumer-hardware product will get to satisfy their curiosity as the company, joining with T-Mobile (DT), unveils its $179 G1 handheld computer. This touch-screen device will compete with Apple’s iPhone, and it includes a key feature missing in the iPhone: a physical keyboard.

The G1 is built around a model of openness, enabling developers to create applications — software programs, called “apps” for short — that will succeed or fail according to the feedback from the online community. Naturally, these community-contributed programs need a marketplace where G1 users can find them, and the Android Market provides just that.

This week, I installed various applications from the Android Market on a G1 and tested them out. Google (GOOG) says it will launch with around 40 to 50 applications in this virtual store, and these and all other apps will be available free of charge from now until at least the start of next year.

BreadCrumbz makes maps.

I found these apps to be useful, entertaining and mostly straightforward. There were a few that I felt tried to jam too much into one application, such as BreadCrumbz, an app that asks users to add pictures, instructional arrows and labels to maps that they make for friends. Other apps kept it short and sweet, like Wi-Fi Toggle — a one-touch button that turns wireless capability on or off to save battery power.

The G1’s apps are more utilitarian than most apps I’ve tested for Apple’s iPhone — and not quite as visually pleasing. I even compared one G1 program, Plusmo College Football, directly with the same app running on the iPhone, and I missed the artsy touches of the Apple (AAPL) version — like menus that flipped 180 degrees when selected rather than simply opening.

One downside: Only a measly 70 megabytes of internal flash memory are reserved on the G1 for storing these third-party applications. Once you fill that limited internal storage space, you have to delete some of your apps to add more. You can’t currently store apps on the phone’s roomier removable memory card. (A one-gigabyte microSD comes with the G1.) The iPhone doesn’t set such an arbitrary limit on application-storage space. The Android Market, like Apple’s iTunes, keeps a record of each user’s installed apps so they can be easily downloaded again later at no extra charge (if they carried a fee). But, unlike the iPhone, the G1 can’t back up your apps to a PC or Mac.

The G1’s open model means extra setup steps during app installation. For example, if an application will access certain information — such as a user’s Internet connection, location data (as identified by GPS) or other personal information (calendar, contacts, etc.) — warnings appear during installation, and the user must grant permission. In addition, many apps come with license agreements that must be okayed before users can continue. If something goes wrong with an app, people can post complaints on community boards or email developers, whose email addresses appear during installation.

The Android Market home page.

To offer a general idea of what’s available, I’ve highlighted a handful of apps that I like. I broke the applications into three groups: Functional, Fun (if occasionally kitschy) and Frills.

Functional

Wi-Fi Toggle: This does what it says. Once installed, it adds an icon to the G1’s desktop that provides a quick way to turn Wi-Fi on and off without digging into the settings menu.

Locale: Like Wi-Fi Toggle on steroids, this app allows a user to set up a G1 so it dynamically changes its settings in specific conditions. The settings can respond to calls from certain people or changes in the phone’s battery power, calendar, the user’s location or the time. For instance, the Wi-Fi can automatically turn off, ringer volume can go up or down, desktop wallpaper can change or a post can be sent. Just think of all the churchgoers who could ensure their cellphone ringers are turned off on Sunday mornings or when the church’s location is sensed.

Ringdroid: Make ringtones from your own songs by adjusting bars to mark the start and end of each ringtone. Hitting Save automatically keeps the ringtone, labeled with the song’s name by default, for use on the phone.

Video Player: The G1 doesn’t have a built-in way to play videos, and this app does the trick in a clear-cut, reliable way.

Fun

Movie ShowTimes: This lets people use a finger to flick across the G1’s touch screen to page through movie poster images, titles and brief descriptions. Below each movie description, an on-screen button labeled “Showtimes Near You” uses GPS to generate lists of nearby movie times.

Pac-Man: The classic arcade game never gets old. You can move Pac-Man through his maze with one of three methods: tilting the G1 so its accelerometer moves the Pac-Man, swiping with a finger to point Pac-Man in the right direction or using the trackball to move him around the screen. I preferred the trackball.

Cooking Capsules: This program demonstrates food-making without being either too intimidating or too dull and simplified. Though there were only six “capsules” when I tested it, each includes steps for watching (an instructional video), shopping (using an on-screen list of items) and cooking (with numbered instructions on how to cook the food).

Bonsai Blast is a gaming app that’s now available for the G1.

Bonsai Blast: This colorful, Asian-themed game directs people to shoot colorful marbles at other chains of marbles, with a goal of getting three matching marbles lined up beside one another so they’ll disappear.

Krystle II: Turns your G1’s entire screen into a picture of fur that purrs and vibrates as you touch it. There’s no real point, but Krystle II is addictive and strangely comforting during long conference calls.

Frills

Ecorio: This well-intended app aims to track users’ travel carbon footprints in order to make them more responsible for the environment. It asks users to enter things like recent transit routes and carpools and suggests ways to reduce and offset people’s footprints.

Maverick: An IM program that allows people to add scribbles, location data or even photos to active instant-messaging conversations. Maverick signs users into Google Talk and Picasa simultaneously, adding IM images into an auto-generated Picasa album for later viewing.

PicSay: Add word balloons, titles, props and effects to digital photos captured and/or stored on the G1, then send the images via multimedia messaging service or email, or save one as a caller ID.

There are many more G1 apps to try, and developers are expected to keep making them for this new device. As with the iPhone, apps obtained for the G1 from the Android Market enable it to morph into a different device with different tools every day.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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New BlackBerry Offers Versatility in Flip Form

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:18:02 +0000

Smartphones are masters of multitasking. They email, browse the Web, instant message, take pictures, run applications or play videos and music. So it’s easy to forget how uncomfortable they are to use as phones. Most are rectangular slabs that are awkward to hold against the ear, causing many smartphone users to also carry a basic cellphone just for calls.

At least one smartphone manufacturer is doing something about this. This week, Research In Motion (RIMM) introduced the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, available for $150 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile (DT). This device is the first BlackBerry in a flip phone, or clamshell, form. Like RIM’s mainstream, candy-bar-shaped BlackBerry Pearl, the Flip uses a SureType keyboard, which has condensed keys and relies on predictive text software.

The Pearl Flip uses a SureType keyboard, which takes up less space.

After using the Pearl Flip for a week, I’ve found it to be a stylish messaging device that works well as a comfortable phone. I really liked its exterior screen, which is designed to show previews of incoming messages, saving people the trouble of flipping open the device. It runs on T-Mobile’s slow EDGE network, but has built-in Wi-Fi and the ability to automatically connect to saved, nearby wireless networks.

First-time smartphone buyers will likely find the Pearl Flip to be a good fit. When it flips open, a special hinge drops the top half of the device slightly behind the bottom half, and a handy trackball makes navigation easy. The Flip’s Web browser enables streaming videos that look sharp on its interior screen, and a microSD card slot supports up to 16 gigabytes of memory.

But current BlackBerry owners who want to switch to a device with a more comfortable phone may have trouble adjusting to the Pearl Flip’s SureType keyboard — especially if they’re used to a device with a full QWERTY keyboard. Though the Pearl Flip’s keyboard is a generous size and its keys are flat and easy to press, its SureType design assigns two letters to almost every key, which can be frustrating to use when predictive text guesses a different word than that which is intended.

The Pearl Flip 8220 is RIM’s first flip phone BlackBerry.

The Pearl Flip supports T-Mobile’s Unlimited HotSpot Calling, a service that doesn’t use any minutes on phone calls begun in Wi-Fi zones. Even if a user leaves the Wi-Fi zone in which he or she started a phone conversation, the call passes over to the T-Mobile cellular network without dropping out. This service costs $10 monthly in addition to regular service charges.

When I made calls on the Pearl Flip, friends on the other line noted how crisp and clear our connection sounded. And best of all, the Pearl Flip’s long, clamshell profile was easy to hold and fit snugly and comfortably between my ear and shoulder when I needed two hands to carry things.

BlackBerry’s signature red light blinks in this device’s top corner to indicate new messages. The 1.6-inch exterior screen displays about 25 words (give or take) from newly received emails, instant messages, SMS, MMS, calendar notifications and task reminders. If a message is received from a contact to whom a photo is assigned, that photo also shows up on the external screen to identify the sender. Side buttons let users scroll up or down through these previews.

This display is designed so that the same message being previewed externally will appear on the internal screen as soon as the Pearl Flip is opened. This makes sense because people will want to reply to some emails or read their entire contents after seeing a short preview. But my device didn’t do this at first; instead, the internal screen seemed completely unrelated to the external screen. I finally got this feature to work after my external screen froze and I rebooted the Pearl Flip. RIM said it hadn’t seen this behavior before, and wasn’t sure what had caused it.

The interior screen measures 2.4 inches diagonally and has a resolution of 240×320 pixels, which is a larger, higher resolution screen than most basic cellphones. While using Wi-Fi, I pulled up YouTube.com and watched a video. It played without skipping or stopping while streaming directly from the Web. A higher-resolution video, which was saved to my device, automatically played in horizontal mode so as to take up the entire screen; YouTube videos play vertically, without using the full screen.

Up to 10 email accounts can be set up on the Pearl Flip; I had no problems using Hotmail, .Mac and Gmail accounts. I also signed into AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk on the Pearl Flip. Along with these messaging programs, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and BlackBerry Messenger also come pre-installed and ready to use.

If my Pearl Flip was closed and I remained signed into an instant-messaging client, notifications appeared on the external screen telling me who was sending an IM and what it said. When I opened the device, I was automatically directed to the screen where I could reply to the instant message.

I tested the T-Mobile Unlimited HotSpot Calling feature by starting calls using a Wi-Fi network and then leaving the network’s range. The calls remained steady without dropping or fading, and if I were a paying customer, I wouldn’t have been charged minutes for those calls. Calls that start out of Wi-Fi zones and end in Wi-Fi zones do deduct minutes. My Pearl Flip had no trouble automatically moving from the cellular network to a Wi-Fi network.

All T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspots, such as at airports or in Starbucks (SBUX), automatically work with the Pearl Flip if you’re registered for the $10 monthly Unlimited Hotspot Calling.

If you’re considering taking the plunge into the always-connected world of smartphones, or if you want a more comfortable phone in your smartphone and don’t mind the quirks of SureType, the Pearl Flip 8220 may be the BlackBerry for you.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Social-Networking Software Becomes Neighborly

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:32:45 +0000

Instant-messaging programs, once the snobby little kids of the online communication world, have had to learn to play well with others.

AOL’s AIM started out with enough popularity to freely ignore the need to integrate with other programs; now, it can be argued that AIM retains its relevancy by operating with other messaging programs like Google’s Gmail chat and Apple’s iChat. Other IM clients paired up with one another to increase usability, like when Microsoft and Yahoo became interoperable over two years ago.

But nowadays, social-networking offerings — like leaving messages on Facebook walls and receiving Twitter “tweets” from friends — compete with traditional instant-messaging programs. And advanced technology in mobile devices has helped these chats move from desktops to iPhones and BlackBerrys, where conversations can continue on-the-go, using mobile applications.

Three free programs — Meebo, Adium and Digsby — work by consolidating numerous messaging accounts into one combined program.

This week I tested three free programs that seem to acknowledge the fading star of isolated instant messaging, as we once knew it. Meebo, Adium and Digsby work by consolidating numerous messaging accounts into one combined program. Some of these include social-networking integration or even built-in email notifications, turning the service into a one-stop shop for online communication. The result can save people from choosing one IM system over another.

All three of these programs are straightforward and work without much effort or instruction. They require users to enter the user names and passwords to log onto each IM account, which may make some people uncomfortable, even though each site explains its privacy policy. Of the three, Digsby offers to integrate with the greatest number of programs all at once, including instant messaging, email and social-networking accounts. It also lets people handle email by deleting or sorting it directly in the IM window, which neither of the other programs does.

But Digsby isn’t yet usable on Macs or Linux, and Adium (the second-best offering) is available only on Macs. When used with the correct operating system, these programs perform as promised, easing communication overall and saving people the hassle of logging into various accounts — or missing out on chats with friends because of not signing into certain programs.

Meebo, www.meebo.com, is the only one of these three products that is completely Web-based. It works on all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, and doesn’t require any installation — a plus for those who would like to be using instant messaging in the office but aren’t able to install software on corporate computers. It can log users into one of six messaging programs simultaneously, including Yahoo, Microsoft, AIM, Google, ICQ and Jabber.

I signed onto three instant-messaging accounts at once on Meebo by entering the username and password for each and selecting one overall “Sign In” button, which logged me into each program simultaneously and displayed all of my contacts in one condensed panel. Meebo can be configured to automatically launch within Firefox if a Firefox extension is downloaded.

Meebo.com is also usable on the iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing people to log into multiple accounts simultaneously from their mobile device. As of now, neither Adium nor Digsby has an application that allows it to work with the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Digsby, www.digsby.com, was a cinch to set up on my laptop, which was running Windows Vista. It walked me through the steps of adding accounts from instant-messaging programs, email accounts such as Gmail and Hotmail, and social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Digsby works with IM and emails accounts from AOL/AIM, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Jabber, ICQ and Facebook chats also work with Digsby, along with IMAP and POP email accounts.

Once added, all of these accounts are represented in one clean panel. These consolidated communication programs saved me many extra clicks on my computer over a weekend, and I easily chatted with friends while checking messages. New emails received in my Gmail account were visible in a preview panel that popped up when I moved my cursor over the email account name. Right within this email preview panel, I could delete or archive each message; I was also able to mark a message as read or report it as spam. I performed all of these email tasks without opening my Gmail account in a browser or email client. Shortcuts in this preview panel labeled Open, Compose and Inbox sent me to my browser to perform these more-involved tasks.

This in-line functionality also applies to other email accounts, according to Digsby. But though I could see a tally of newly received Hotmail messages in my Digsby preview panel, these messages weren’t as interactive as those received in my Gmail inbox.

Digsby also tracks Twitter alerts and timelines, as well as Facebook newsfeeds and alerts — including posting notifications in your Digsby panel whenever someone “friends” you on Facebook.

Adium, www.adiumx.com, wins points for cuteness. The downloaded program is represented by a goofy, green duck, which plops itself in the Mac operating system dock and closes its eyes when not in use. When new messages are received via Adium, this duck flaps its wings until you open the message. The Adium user interface incorporates sleek visuals, such as status windows that gracefully float above user names whenever a cursor moves over these names.

Adium works with AIM, ICQ, .Mac, Jabber, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Adium supports new email notifications for some accounts, but doesn’t enable reading or sending email within the program. Instead, it offered to open my account via the browser or using Microsoft Entourage on the Mac. Social networking is limited to MySpace IM on Adium, though the next version will support Facebook Chat.

Adium organizes multiple conversations using tabs stacked at the bottom of a chat window. Icons line the top of each chat window, such as a file icon for transferring files and a lock that switches a conversation to be encrypted and off-the-record. Any conversation that isn’t designated encrypted is automatically stored in a table of Adium transcripts, which can be sorted by To, From or Date. Transcripts can be sorted using rough timelines like “within the past two weeks” or “since yesterday.”

I saved myself time and mouse clicks by using these three consolidation programs, though I preferred Digsby in the end because of its intuitive email integration. These programs will help to take down the instant-messaging barriers that have become turn-offs over the past couple years, and may better integrate IM with the social networks and mobile devices that are on the rise.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to the Mossberg Solution at mossbergsolution@wsj.com