Martin Gordon's Blog

My favorite OS X AIM client, Adium, has finally reached 1.0 after being in beta for over six months (I wrote about Beta 1 way back in July). I'm been using Adium since I first got a Mac way back in 2002, when Adium 1.6.2 ruled the world.

That's not a typo, the current, Adium X 1.0, is actually version 2.0. When the developers decided 2.0 would be a complete rewrite, they instead appended an "X" to the application's name and set their sights on a new 2.0.

I was just wondering when Adium would leave beta after receiving an upgrade notification for Beta 42 (!). Here are some of the major changes from 0.89 (the complete list is here):

• Added global user profile and buddy icon settings. (Personal Preferences)
• General Account improvements. Accounts can now be disabled when not in in use, and friends can now sign on from your Adium without saving their information.
• Added an Xtras manager for better browsing and removing of Xtras.
• Major improvements in privacy settings.
• Improvements to the default look and feel of Adium.
• iTunes integration is much faster, and updates as soon as the song changes.
• Redesigned Chat Transcript (Log) Viewer
• Optional dock-like hiding of the contact list
• Requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later (Universal Binary)

I doubt I'll see many day-to-day changes since I've been keeping up with the betas, but for those of you running 0.89, this is sure to be a worthwhile upgrade.

Technorati Tags: AIM, AOL, instant messaging, Mac, Apple, OS X, software, Cocoa, Adium, Adium X, MSN, Yahoo IM, Google Talk, Jabber

Sorry about the hiatus, finishing up the semester and job-hunting (and Zelda ;)) have taken up way too much time and something had to give. Luckily not a lot has been going on over the past two and a half weeks. Now to get back into it…

TechCrunch reports that Jason Calacanis has joined VC firm Sequoia Capital as an "Entrepreneur in Action". Congrats to Jason!

This move is another data point for the idea that to become a VC, one needs industry experience first. Guy Kawasaki also talks about this in a recent post and even came up the VCAT, the Venture Capital Aptitude Test. I'm curious to see how Jason would score? Famed VC Mike Moritz didn't do too well, but I'd still want to see how a brand new VC scores.

Interestingly enough, the news broke almost 2 hours ago and its still not on TechMeme. The first Digg story showed up an hour and a half ago and the most popular one 45 minutes ago. Hmmm…

Technorati Tags: VC, Venture Capital, Jason Calacanis, AOL, Weblogs Inc, Sequoia Capital, Mike Moritz, Guy Kawasaki, VCAT, entrepreneurship

Jason Calacanis has put out a second beta (read: second episode) of his podcast, CalacanisCast. I'll admit I haven't subscribed to it yet because I'm trying to get my unplayed podcast count down to 0 in iTunes (only 4 to go!) before I add it, but I've been a fan of his blog for a while so I'm sure the podcast will be great as well. Can't wait to hear it as the reviews of the first beta episode have been generally positive.

Technorati Tags: Jason Calacanis, AOL, Weblogs Inc, Netscape, Podcast, CalacanisCast

Google Talk's one year anniversary is approaching, and a report has come out saying that it's not doing too hot, just as I predicted. The fact of the matter is, there's no use competing in the textual IM space anymore; the market is saturated. Everyone is pretty much ingrained in what their social circles will use and no amount of smilie packs or client skins will change that.

What AOL/MSN/Y! and Google should be concentrating on is audio (though this market is pretty much consumed by Skype) and video chat. Making an excellent service centered around great audio or video chat and being the first to release it will practically guarantee you market share. There's only so much you can do with text, but the possibilities are endless for audio and video. We already see Skype bringing people together from all over the world to record audio podcasts, but imagine being able to do the same for video. Or have your recorded conversations be easily posted to your blog or YouTube. The numbers YouTube is showing prove that video is the next (current?) killer app of the internet. As broadband gains even more traction and companies like Apple make webcams ubiquitous by building them into their machines, video is poised to find its way into more application "genres" than what we currently see.

Technorati Tags: video, YouTube, Skype, Google Talk, AOL, AIM, MSN, Microsoft, Yahoo, Yahoo IM, Apple, webcam, iSight, audio, market share

Microsoft and Yahoo have begun testing instant messaging interoperability between the two company's IM services in effort to better fight AOL's position in the IM market.

I really don't know how much it will help though. If they're looking for shear numbers, they've effectively cut their potential market in half since now there's no reason to have both an MSN account and a Y! IM account. I have both a Windows Live Messenger and a Y! IM account by virtue of the other services these logins offer (access to Office/Vista betas on the Microsoft side; My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail on the Yahoo side), but I have no reason to sign on to either IM service because I have no friends that use those services. The ability to use one login to have access to no friends on either service isn't very appealing.

Even still, in the age of Meebo and Adium, both multi-protocol IM apps, there's so much transparency between protocols that having to enter one less login name in the Accounts window is pretty inconsequential. Of course, having only one login name does have some benefits, namely synchronization. Now you will only need to worry about one buddy list, one status, one profile, etc.

Unless this interoperablity makes switching from AIM, I don't see it having much effect in the IM wars. What I do like about this agreement is the possiblilty of more Microsoft/Yahoo! collaboration and even the purchase of Yahoo! by Microsoft. Now that's something to chat about.

BTW, WY! = Windows Live Messenger + Yahoo! Messenger

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN, Windows Live, Windows Live Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! IM, AOL, AIM, IM, instant messaging, instant messenger, Meebo, Adium, interoperability