I love holidays but there are two things that really bust my chops about taking some hard-earned R&R: the massive push before you leave to clear everything from your to-do list and coming back to a billion messages. While there’s not a lot you can do about the first problem, Slack is taking a crack at the second part - at least when it comes to messages. Highlights is an intelligence layer that the company says will transform the way people keep up with critical information and build connections at work.

Kik Messenger is a popular messaging platform used by about 15 million people each month. And that makes it a place that can be leveraged into a marketplace. From its humble beginnings as a way for Blackberry, Android and iOS users to seamlessly message, it is trying to broaden its horizons as it has been overtaken by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and others. The next addition to the Kik platform will be a cryptocurrency called Kin.

Popular instant messaging client imo will discontinue support for third-party services this week. That means no more AIM, Facebook, MSN, Skype or Yahoo integration.

Hashtags are kinda silly and overly promoted in social media, but they can be useful for some things. For example, you can use them in chat conversations to find information or links you'll need later.

Windows: In most situations, IM apps like Hangouts will do fine for your instant messaging needs. If you need something more local, LAN Messenger can help.

Mac: We're fans of the Cryptocat web app for creating encrypted chatrooms in any web browser. Now, the private chat client is available on your Mac.

Now that we have SMS and Facebook, are the old instant messaging methods becoming obsolete? We recently posted power-up guides for Pidgin and Adium that were apparently of little interest to most people, despite both being the most popular chat clients on their respective platforms. It seems that IM just may not matter that much anymore.

Chrome: Google's chat feature is useful for sending quick IMs and starting video chat sessions, but you can only view it when you're on a Google page like Gmail. Google has released an official Chrome extension that detaches it from your browser, allowing you to view it no matter what web page you're viewing.

Linux: Many Linux users love to accomplish as much as they can utilising only the command line structure in Terminal. CenterIM lets you chat with your friends on GTalk, Jabber, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Chat, or AIM. Aside from the novelty, it is extremely resource-light and makes it easy to chat via SSH.

Android: Imo, our favourite mobile IM application, just updated their Android app with a shiny new interface, a group chat feature and a searchable chat history.

iPad: Imo is our favourite instant messaging application for iOS, and the iPad version just got even better with the ability send pictures and videos embedded in IMs.

Skype just released an iPad version of its mobile app today, bringing a new interface optimised for large screens, as well as everything you've come to expect from Skype: two-way video calling, instant messaging and SMS texting.

Windows: Pidgin may be our pick for best instant messaging application in Windows, but one thing it can't do is block out unwanted IMs or buddy requests. That's where Pidgin Privacy Please comes in.

Windows/Mac/Linux: InstantBird is an instant messaging client that looks great and won't drain system resources. If you want a highly customisable IM application that provides a consistent experience across Windows, Mac OS and Linux, it's worth a try.

If you have a friend or relative living a bit further away than you'd like, you can stay in touch with the magic of video chat. It's actually quite simple to set up; here's how to do it.

AIM has integrated their instant messaging service with Google Talk, allowing you to talk to your friends on both protocols with only one login. Here's how to import all your AIM buddies into Google Talk in one fell swoop.

Android finally has a few good IM apps in the Market, but if you're looking for multi-protocol IM, it's hard to beat Imo. It's got an incredibly intuitive design, easy-to-use sign in process, voice IMs, and support for all the most popular protocols.

The iPhone offers up an ton of IM apps, some of which are very good, but none that are quite as good as imo. Imo hits the sweet spot thanks to its speedy operation, intuitive interface, support for many chat protocols, and keeping itself limited to just the features you really want.

There are some great instant messaging apps out on Windows, but we think it's hard to beat Pidgin's low footprint, support for tons of different protocols, plugin-based architecture, and open source code.