Linkinus 2 is the most powerful and flexible Mac chat software there is, yet it’s easy to use and newcomers will instantly know how to use it thanks to over 330 built-in networks, the Hint Box and the searchable channel list. Random software recommendation: Linkinus, the IRC app for Mac OS X Dec 10, 2008 Nicholas Deleon Here’s a random software recommendation for Mac OS X users. A ProTip, if you will.
Philosophical question: Is it really a bad 'beta', or has your preconceived notion on what a 'beta' should be been radically altered by the sheer number of startups that throw the word around now? Gmail was in 'beta' for about a million years, and was incredibly stable for most of that.
I think it has become the allegorical metric these days. But I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's when making the choice to use beta software was a decision not to be taken lightly because you probably would find tons of very easily reproducible, obvious, critical bugs. Don't forget that before 'beta' was widely used as an adjective, it was a noun and it was immediately followed by the word 'test'.
There's a difference between a new beta and an app that has been in closed beta for months already and only today has been made available to the public. Just because it's 'beta' doesn't mean there should be obvious trivial bugs present. Just to run off a few issues we found within literally minutes of using the app: 1. Resizing window to a small size then making it large again causes the entire chat view to become very narrow. Messages sent by one user, often get displayed next to another person's username (so it looks like someone else wrote the message). Notification popups appears even when the app is actively being viewed. If you go away from keyboard, the app sets you as idle, but when you return, the idle indicator doesn't get removed I could go on and on.
The Quassel IRC client is actually split into two pieces. The server module which actually connects to, and interacts with, the IRC server. The client portion which connects to, and interacts with, the quassel server.
Most people just use 'Quassel' as a simple desktop app in which case both modules are merged and it acts just like a normal IRC client. However you can also install the server module on a server somewhere in which case it stays connected to the IRC server, buffering chats etc.
You can then connect to it with the client part of quassel which is installed on your local desktop, which you close it all you are doing is closing the client module. I really like that design, a good separation of concerns allows it. I appreciate this and the previous comments, but I gotta say: this sounds like a lot of schlep. I may be wrong, but I feel like the right persistent chat service can/should become a 21st century usenet/google group, where the conversation is always happening, IFFT-style hooks help you filter/act on info, and history is Gmail-simple. I'm investigating a group-chat solution right now for an organization of several thousand non-technical members, and my intuition tells me IRC would simply not be adopted by most users. Do you get file sharing, easy group chat, @mentions across rooms, public temporary invites to customers into internal channels, very easy github and zendesk integration and, the killer feature for me, a searchable archive over all conversations?
I'm sure you can do all of these with ejabberd and some additional external tools, but setting all these components up goes way beyond just apt-get'ing the software. Now, you might not need some (or all) of the additional features, so ejabberd is the perfect solution for you, but you can't jump to the conclusion that because you don't need a feature, nobody does. I'm a quite new HipChat customer - we were using skype before, but the indexed archive is a total killer feature for me and already helped me and my coworkers a lot as it helps us to learn from conversations between other people, thus reducing the amount of stuff that has to be asked multiple times. For me, that's totally worth the $2 per user per month. The killer feature is that nontechnical Mac and Windows users can click a link emailed from anyone on their team who is already using the app, and get seamless group chat across platforms, without calling the IT department to set up a server and/or open firewall ports, or committing someone on the team to managing anything XMPP-related. It just works.
Even Linux folks can participate with additional work (e.g. Dozens of packages to install if you're running Ubuntu 64, since Adobe AIR is 32-bit only; annoying). That said, I agree that the barrier to entry is pretty low. Apologies for hijacking the thread, but I'm wondering: We're using Campfire right now, with the Propane mac client, and we have a dedicated room for notifications (currently exceptions from Errbit, monitoring alerts from Nagios, CI build failures on Jenkins, app deployments from our own custom tools).
It works pretty well, but we're a team working on a whole bunch of unrelated but overlapping apps, and having everything in a single room is getting to be very messy, and at times the Propane icon is bouncing almost continuously. And Propane doesn't support controlling when to notify me when there are new unread messages, so I have no way of filtering out the noise. Splitting out into multiple rooms is not a workable solution as the 'spheres of interest' are not mutually exclusive. I'm curious if anyone is using Campfire or some other tool in a similar way, or if HipChat could solve the problem (on first glance it looks fairly simplistic). Email doesn't cut it and direct IM through some bot is not really an option. A dedicated notification app/gateway seems like a better fit, but I haven't found one since Notifio folded. We pipe everything into Campfire, scoped into the relevant room (last time I checked we had about 80 separate rooms).
The topical bit is important- a particular app's notifications get dumped into that app's room, for example. That means I only get notified if I'm in that room. Conversely, that means I don't get excessive notifications if I'm not in the room, for apps I'm not interested in. 'Spheres of interest', as you mention them, become less important as you grow the company. We've found it important to not get too sucked into every little aspect of the company- it's too broad. If someone thinks you should know something that's happening in a room you're not in, they can just ping you and you can hop in and stay up-to-date. That's been a really good solution for us.
Do you have your email program open with 8 different mailboxes, one for each project you want to receive communications about? I doubt you do.
Notifications like these are conceptually a queue of stuff that requires your attention. There is no point in separate notifications into multiple queues, they are all equally important. If project A is throwing a fit, it doesn't matter if I'm currently working on project B, it needs my attention.
I don't know Hipchat, but with Campfire and Propane, each chat is designed to be in a separate window/tab. If you bury the room behind a kind of modal selector (as seems to be the case, there's a sidebar with each room?), that's really no better. After all, if I've focused project A and project B starts blinking, I need to switch there. That's an unnecessary switch when all I want is a queue of items to read. (And no, email is way too heavy for this, and I don't want it interleaved with my regular email.
We used to use email, those were bad times.) It's not unusual for all projects to have incidents during a day, whether it be deployment information, exceptions or monitoring alerts. Use different rooms (with relavent people in each room), or make your bot smarter (we do both). You could easily make it so a given user could 'subscribe' to a project by sending a message to the bot. '@companybot subcribe xyz-service'. Then have the bot keep track of those and automatically at-message the interested people upon failures etc. IMO opinion, different rooms are still better, because it brings everyone together when there's an issue also, but it depends how large an organization you have.
Random Software Recommendation: Linkinus The Irc App For Mac Free
Pay a monthly fee for group chat; happens on someone else'e servers; for the love of all that is holy, this exists already doesn't it?? And for free??
It seems 'web 3.0' is all about making tarted up existing free software with hipster interfaces, selling it for $$$, and putting it 'on the cloud' (i.e. On someone else's machines). I know this is the way the world seems to be moving (backwards, back to the 1970s if you ask me, to mainframes and dumb terminals (chrome book anyone?)). But I for one would rather see a world where local users controlled their own machines, their own data, their own encryption, and a peer-to-peer system for communicating maybe someone can invent a standard. TCP/IP anyone?
-grumpy old man.
My must-haves, and some less important but still very neat apps: Essential utilities DragThing - until recently I didn't understand why people needed an app-launcher with functionality beyond what Spotlight offers. But this is a really amazing tool, totally changed how I interact with files and apps. SmcFanControl - for monitoring and changing fan RPM / CPU temperature MainMenu - like Onyx, but lighter weight and always running Onyx - to do everything MainMenu can't, as well as some essential UI tweaks (e.g, getting rid of the 3d dock!).
Isolator - great ultra-lightweight little menu bar app to fade out background windows Airfoil - for wirelessly streaming my computer's audio over my AppleTV's surround sound (so useful), or to my iPhone (awesome, but a little gimmicky) TrueCrypt - excellent option for file and drive encryption; would own it even if it cost $250, but it's free! Internet Chromium (nightly dev release, update every couple days) - my internet browsing workhorse; seems to be faster than everything except maybe Safari, but interface is much more appealing to me than Safari Safari - my failsafe browsing option, for when Chromium doesn't work (some internet video sites don't seem to like Chromium) Firefox - I use this with Vidalia and Torbutton and some other extensions for any sensitive browsing for which greater security and anonymity is desirable. Cyberduck - my FTP client of choice Transmission - lightweight and simple, and does everything torrent-related I need. Dropbox - 2GB of free online storage that integrates perfectly with Finder = win. Little Snitch - great lightweight firewall and network monitor Vidalia - My TOR client of choice Academic Microsoft Word - I tried to like Pages, but it really is inferior to Word. Papers - not really a 'must have', but this is a nice way to keep an organized library of journal articles and other PDF documents. Media Editing Adobe Lightroom 3 (beta) - Having previously used Aperture, I find this a better overall app in pretty much all ways.
Pixelmator - very intuitive and aesthetically appealing image editing, not as powerful as PS, but more than enough for most of what I do. Final Cut Studio - this covers everything I need in software for video production, except Magic Bullet Looks - how I do color grading for video. Other Candybar - for easily changing ugly dock icons, or freshening up the overall look of my system.
FontExplorer - hands down the best font manager, absolutely essential for anyone doing design, or anything really that involves non-standard fonts. CoconutBattery - to keep track of battery health in my MacBook DaisyDisk - ultra-cool-looking app to quickly visualize which files and folders are taking up the most room on my hard drives VLC - I transcode all of the videos I acquire to h.264 AppleTV-friendly m4v format, but VLC is how I first make sure it's what I wanted, that the subtitles work, etc etc Handbrake - best video transcoding option for Mac, hands down. Fairmount - needed to rip DVDs with 64-bit Handbrake 7zx - for handling archive files that Finder can't.
Click to expand.Yeah, I'm in love with Skitch also. It's just so easy, and I'm surprised by how much I use it. Other apps: Things Evernote NetNewsWire 1Password (I'm still trying to figure out a quick way to add app licenses without manually adding line by line. I tried to drag apps to it, but that didn't work.
Does anyone know?) Click to Flash Concentrate Tweetie Fluid (I made apps for Mint.com,Youtube, and Instapaper. ) Transmission MarsEdit Hulu Caffiene Last.fm scrobbler Facebook Notifications.
Anything by Adobe: I know, their. is overpriced, but there are workarounds. TextEdit: This is the unsung hero of OS X. Blender: A free, open source 3D suite that kicks Maya's ass! - Grand Perspective: Helps you free up hard drive space by revealing large files.
µTorrent: The best torrent software for the Mac. Djay: fun as hell app for turning your iTunes library into an arsenal of mixing mayhem. iWork: Because it's everything MS Office failed to be, at a cheaper price.
Dropbox: A free alternative to MobileMe's iDisk. Extremely effective. Tell your friends!
- Fetch: A simple but effective drag-and-drop FTP app. Longtime favorite. Firefox: If there is is a global standard for web browsing, this is it. Plenty of great extensions. Google Earth: Our planet is amazing. See for yourself. Handbrake: Goodbye DVD region codes, goodbye physical discs, goodbye DRM!
- iTunes, iCal, Address Book, and the iLife apps: Thanks, Apple! - iShowU: Flexible screen capture software. Comes in handy at times. Little Snitch: Informs you when your software (legitimate or otherwise) attempts to connect to the internet, and asks your permission to allow or deny. MindNode Pro: Simple yet effective mind mapping software.
Nestopia: NES emulator for Mac. Time to dust off your ROMs!
- PeerGuardian: Protects your privacy by blocking your IP during P2P filesharing. Reason: Still one of my favorite DAWs after all these years.
Senuti: Got music on your iPod you need to move onto your Mac? This will do it. It will also preserve your playlists. Skype: Video chat with users all over the world for free! Call any cell or land line phone for cheap. Time Machine: What good are any of these other apps I'm listing if you don't have them backed up? It's free with OS X.
Tinker Tool: Because there are system preferences you wish OS X gave you, but didn't. Toast: the best way to burn or copy CDs and DVDs on the Mac. VLC Media Player: Got a video file that won't open in QuickTime?
Chances are, VLC will open it. VMware Fusion: Does a fine job of running Windows or Linux virtual machines on the Mac.
Parallels: Does a fine job of running Windows or Linux virtual machines on the Mac. XaoS: Open source fractal viewer. For the nerdiest of us. Mac The Ripper: Extract the VIDEOTS folder of any DVD. Use at your own discretion. Audio Hijack: Capture audio from any application running on your Mac. Doom 1, 2, & 3: You know you want to bring back the addiction.
Why bother to resist? Schoolhouse - free (or used to be?) - Used everyday to organize assignment/test dates, also has option to email professor right threw it and can calculate your average based on weighting. Adium - Free - All in one chat client Tranmissions - Free - Bitorrent Client ShakesPeer - Free - DC Client Dropbox - Free (2GB) - Online storage, love the intregation all my Uni work is auto backed up on to it. InsomniaX - Free - Prevents mac from going to sleep when you shut the lid or turn off the screen.
BetterTouchTool - Free - adds more gestures to Magic Mouse and Multitouch Trackpads. SMCfancontrol - Free - Controls Fan speeds. AppCleaner - Free - Helps delete apps completely. I kind of like iTunes since my conversion but I miss foobar with a passion. The lack of a truly great music player on OS X still baffles me. That said: iTunes - Bowtie - GimmeSomeTunes - Volume Logic (Since SRS iWOW has seemed to decide to stopped working: ) Candybar - Essential program for people who like to customize. Nerdtool Adium Linkinus - Been on IRC since '94.
This is the best IRC client I've ever used. Skype uTorrent - My favorite torrent client, yet still a year or two behind its windows counterpart unfortunately.
A new app launcher currently in beta. AppZapper - If there's a better app for this, let me know please. Itsy - Small and lightweight twitter client. Nice mods out there to make it pretty as well. Macam - Got my Microsoft LifeCam working thanks to this Little Snitch - Essential.
Everyone needs this. Media Rage - I miss Tag & Rename but this helps. SlipCover - For adding DVD covers to folder or files Yahoo Messenger - I actually do like their OS X offering, and think it is much, much better than its Windows counterpart. TextMate PList Editor Pro edit: forgot Perian! Click to expand.Got to agree with you there. Finder is terrible, but so is XP and Vista file manager.
Win7 file manager is actually rather good, or at least good enough to get me to use it instead of Directory Opus on Win7. But on OSX Path Finder is the bee's knees. Platypus is a cool app if you need to for example turn an Applescript into an actual app you can easily launch from your desktop or whereever. Pixen is a cool image editor specifically made for old school pixel graphics. Sadly it seems that it is no longer being developed but even in its current form it is good for doing pixel graphics, far better than something that isn't really made for that like Pixelmator or Photoshop. For the sake of this thread, how about people don't post the obvious ones (like Firefox or iTunes) and repeat what others have posted (unless they have something to say about it).