Windows only: Newly released chat application Digsby consolidates instant messaging, email, text messaging, and social networking into one very slick chat application. As far as IM, Digsby covers all the major players, from AIM to Google Talk; it handles Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or virtually any POP or IMAP account for email; and it supports updates of all the latest happenings on your Facebook or MySpace profile. As far as full-on consolidation of hot social web tools right now, the only thing really missing is Twitter integration. Currently Digsby is Windows only in private beta (use code lifehacker to sign up), but Mac and Linux versions are purportedly on the way. It's not open source like Pidgin or Adium (which it looks very much like), but the all-inclusive integration is probably enough to lure a lot of IM users to its warm embrace. Flip through the gallery (hit the jump for more) to get a closer look at everything Digsby's got to offer.

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Now that Gmail's got AIM support baked into the web interface, Gmailer Steve Rubel commented how nice it will be to have SmarterChild along with your email. Nearly three years ago we first posted about SmarterChild, an AIM bot that can do all sorts of interesting command line-y things, like look up the weather, store notes, trigger timed IM reminders, calculate and convert, and generally answer any kind of question, like "What's the population of Indonesia?" or "What movies are playing near me tonight?" This morning I chatted with SmarterChild about all the stuff it can do, inside Gmail and out.

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Not only did Google add coloured labels to Gmail today, they're rolling out AIM compatibility in chat, too. The new AOL Instant Messenger support lets you log into your AIM account to chat with your AIM buddies right inside Gmail. Not sure yet if your AIM chat history is stored in your Gmail account the way GTalk convo's are. Update: AIM chat history does indeed get stored in Gmail. Rock! We're not seeing it just yet, but being an AIM over GTalk user, I'll keep refreshing till I do. To try it out you've got to be using the new version of Gmail in IE7 or Firefox 2. Sign into Chat and hit the Options menu to see the "Sign into AIM" option. Any readers out there get AIM in Gmail yet? Let us know how you like it. Image via Zoorgloob.