Meebo has become an extremely popular online instant messenger, and with a status as prestigious as theirs comes clones. With Meebo you can communicate with friends and family from anywhere you have an Internet connection and a browser. And if you want to start your own similar service go checkout the open source version called Soashable (project page).
If Meebo is so great why would anyone want to use knockoff? Since Soashable is open source anyone can take their code and modify it so that it fits in well with their own site. For example, Facebook could take this, modify it a bit, and have a product that looks like their own cross-network chat client.
At this time Soashable isn’t quite up to the standard that Meebo has set because it only supports MSN Messenger, AIM, and Yahoo. They’ve got some stuff in the works to add XMPP/Google Talk support to a future release which is what I’m really looking forward to. Soashable also doesn’t do file transfers, chat rooms, or some other little things here and there.
I find this project to be cool because the only limitations users will have, such as the size of file transfers, will be what they set on their own servers. Not to mention the additional privacy you’ll get by running this yourself.
Soashable (download the code)
[via Webware]
Enjoyed the post? Subscribe to our feed to get a daily dose of CyberNet!
Tags: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Web Sites, Messengers, Social Networks
Related Posts:
- Meebo Gets Some Competition: Kool IM
- Meebo Brings IM to Firefox Web Browser
- CyberNotes: How To Chat With Your Friends At Work
- Meebo Launches File Transfer Feature!
- Meebo Surpasses 500,000 Users
Works well, but will be using Pidgin and use this one or Meebo when I need to access IM and there isn’t any IM client installed on the computer.
Doesn’t it become really easy to gather login information by adjusting the code and putting it on your own site for people to use this way? I’m afraid that people will trust this too easily and will just login on any site instead of just the ones they trust.
I totally agree with change. But since any modifications made to the code, will also be open source( I hope it is GPL), i am sure that malicious intent will be caught easily. Yeah Pidgin is a killer, but i think i will try this anyway.
I cannot see how to download the code really.
Maybe it is not available anymore. Could anybody help me and tell me were to get the code?
That’s a good point, and it could of course happen. That’s feasible for any site that has a login though, such as PayPal and eBay which we see with the phishing scams. So I guess the question is whether it’s worth having an open source version available to anyone, or scrap the project to help prevent any “scams” from occurring.
I could have sworn that the files were underneath the Downloads tab on the Google Code page yesterday, but I could be wrong. They’re not there today though for some odd reason.
Well, I would compare it to having a login box to PayPal on every shopping site you buy things from via PayPal, instead of being redirected to the PayPal site. How do you know it’s really a trustworthy PayPal box then? It looks good and recognizable, but could still used for phishing scams.
With Meebo, you go to Meebo at all times (if I’m correct - have only tried it a few times). You know you can trust the site. With this project, you login at various sites and you get used to logging in at various sites. Your alarm bells likely won’t ring anymore when you have to login at a site that looks trustworthy, with the same login box you use on all those other sites, but is a phishing site in reality.. (or hacked)
The remark about it being open source is a fair point, but that assumes that you can check the code as a user. You won’t do that every time. I think the danger is in the familiarity with the login box that is created, instead of a familiarity with a site/url.