Instant Messaging for Your Windows Mobile Device

It has been a while since I posted anything about instant messenger applications available for your mobile device. Geodesic is one of a number of companies I talked to while at CTIA 2007. They have developed a mobile application that they call mundu IM. This application is interoperable with all the major IM services (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, Jabber and ICQ), and you can be logged into all of the services simultaneously. I recently took advantage of mundu's 5-day free trial and was impressed.

Although I don't regularly use IM, I do have a screen name for five of the six services, so I entered in all of my information, and when I started up the application, I had no problems logging into any of the services. Mundu IM is fairly intuitive. All of your contacts are viewable with an icon next to them, showing which IM service they are on, and you have the option of sorting your contacts by the groups (folders) they are in or the IM service that they are on. There are a number of other user-customizable options as well, including the ability to set a different presence status for the different IM services and you can choose whether or not you want to see your offline contacts. You can even access saved chats (although I'm not sure how long they are stored) and mundu IM will tell you if you have unread e-mail if you have active e-mail accounts with any of these services.

As I stated earlier, I'm not a big IM user, so I didn't put mundu IM through extreme testing with multiple chats going on at the same time (although I think it has that capability) but it worked well enough in the 1-to-1 chats that I tried. The application did not run incredibly fast, but it was noticeably faster than EQO (Although, to be fair, I tested EQO last Fall, and it was on a Motorola KRZR. They may be due for a retest). I'm sure as our network data speed increases and the processors on these mobile devices get faster, mundu IM will run faster as well.

I know software versions can sometimes be misleading, but Geodesic brags that mundu IM is v4 (EQO is still in beta). It does have the refinement that comes from a more mature product. Geodesic sells a lifetime license for mundu IM for $11. If I was a bigger IM user, I would not hesitate to buy it.

Currently mundu IM is only available for Palm and Windows Mobile, but they promise to soon have versions available for Symbian and Windows Mobile Pocket PC.

IM on Your i wireless Phone? You Bet!

If you ask your i wireless salesperson or customer service rep if the new Mobile Web options will let you IM your friends, they will probably tell you "no," but that's not true! With EQO Mobile, you can chat with your friends, whether they are on AOL, ICQ, GoogleTalk, MSN, Skype or Yahoo. I successfully downloaded and installed the application from www.eqo.com/a onto a Motorola KRZR K1. While it does work, it is EXTREEEEEEEMELY slow! I'm warning you now, if you are one of those people that pushes the elevator button ten times because you don't get a response fast enough, you are going to have to restrain yourself when using this application. I don't know if this is due to the number of contacts I had on my buddy list, the available phone memory, the available bandwidth, or something else, but it is painful. As with many of the applications I am going to review here, EQO is in beta testing, so that may have something to do with it as well. If you want the capability to instant message, it is there. I have not yet tried all the services. I was able to use AIM, but for some reason, my username and password for Google Talk did not take. I may try to log into Skype and Yahoo at some point in the future just to try it.