How do you manage to keep up with all the friends in different IMs?

Do you run multiple Instant Messenger applications to chat with friends?

If yes, there is one problem though. The system memory utilized by these different applications can slow your computer down to a crawl.

There are applications called the Unified Messengers or rather “All in one” messenger applications that can solve this problem. There are lots of them over the Internet. But, i like Pidgin http://www.pidgin.im pronounced as “pigeon”.

There are three reasons why i like Pidgin:

1. It is a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) product. Licensed under GPL.
2. Has a small footprint and hogs very less memory.
3. It supports almost all Instant messenger protocols and services

I have been using this for quite a while with literally no issues.

Try it out and let me know what you think of it.

Also, have you been using any other similar tools? Tell me about it….

There is no patch available from Adobe and no timeline from them on patch availability.

Adobe in its brief post on the blog has mentioned it is working with Symantec to investigate this vulnerability and provide an update.

For now, be careful while you access any unknown websites that have flash content. There have been instances of possible infections for people accessing Youtube too.

Here are the 10 tips for techie to save those extra minutes to get more things done:

1. Minimize the number of items on Windows desktop screen: I used to have my desktop screen completely filled with desktop icons, documents, etc. The number of items on the windows desktop is directly proportional to the amount time it takes to boot. Removing some of the icons not used since long did help reduce the booting time.
2. Use hardrive partitions cleverly: Moving some of the data and files from C drive to another partition did free up some space. Also, made Windows run faster by improving the data seek times significantly. Having C drive hold only the OS and essential applications is a good idea to make Windows run faster.
3. Keep only necessary applications: Installing only the applications that I really needed and uninstalling the rest helped keep my system clean.
4. Control startup applications: Many applications starting up can increase your boot time. Disable the unnecessary programs to improve boot up time. Common applications that I had to disable Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, Real player etc. However, make sure to not disable antivirus and desktop firewall applications.
5. Chuck Adobe PDF reader: It takes quite a long time to open a PDF document through Adobe pdf reader. Foxit reader is a free PDF reader which incredibly faster because of its small size (just 2.5 MB). It can downloaded from here
6. Use Firefox: Firefox with its addons called extensions save significant amount of time while browsing the Internet.
7. PDF download: While browsing the web to research on a topic. I often come across PDF files. While clicking on these links, I need to wait until the PDF gets download first and then wait some more time while the PDF reader loads. This not only wastes time but also crashes the browser. The Firefox’s PDF download extension that allows me to choose what to do with a PDF file. Download it, view it with an external viewer or view it as HTML. I particularly like the “view it as HTML”. It allows me to view the pdf on the browser without opening a pdf reader.
8. Foxclocks: This displays the local time zones around the world. I have this on my status bar. Since I need to interact with people around the world, this helps me save time from looking up the time on the internet.
9. Sage: I used to visit several news websites to keep myself updated with the latest news. I had individual go to these sites and read news. Sage is a lightweight feed reader pulls all the latest news from these websites and presents it all in one window. In addition, I can choose to read just the headlines from these websites and read what interests me.Therefore saving me lots of time.
10. IE tab: Some websites do not get loaded as expected on a non-IE browser. IE tab extension allows you to use the embedded IE engine with Firefox to render these websites correctly.