Rather than nagging on about how great it is, here's how to use it:
Step 1: Download and install the Digsby widget application from http://www.digsby.com/ . You will need to select the appropriate version according to the operating system of your computer.
Step 2: After installing the application, the widget will open up and will prompt you for a username and a password. As this will be your first time with Digsby, you will need to click on the link at the bottom which says "Don't have an account?".
Step 3: Fill up the simple form and get your Digsby account. This will be the only username and password you will need to remember from now on.
Step 4: Login to Digsby using your new username and password. When you first login, the system will ask you to setup your email, IM and Social Networks on Digsby. This is a onetime setup and you will be amazed at how it works once it's complete. You can organise all your emails including Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOLMail and even POP or IMAP accounts from within the system. All your IMs such as GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, Live, AIM and Jabber as well as all your Social Networks including FB, Twitter, Myspace and LinkedIn can be setup instantly as well. Digsby will access all your accounts and contacts and will consolidate them for you.
In addition to the setup of your accounts, there are other features and options you can play around with on the left side panel. I shall leave it to you to customise your experience according to your own preferences.
Step 5: Once the setup has been completed, you will see a widget similar to any of the common IM widgets. This widget, which sits in your applications tray, will keep track of all the services you've setup in the previous step without you having to worry about it. The widget will display all your IM contacts on whom you can just click to start an IM chat including an audio/video conversation or even start a group chat with a bunch of contact such as your party buddies. You can even directly send an e-mail through the widget without logging on to your favourite email account. It's that simple.
Step 6: All of your accounts will be displayed at the bottom. It will also indicate how many unread mails, posts or IMs you have in each of your networks. To read the mails, post entries, or even manage your emails (i.e. delete, mark as read etc.) you just need to point to the network which you want to look into and the system will pull all the info for you without you needing to open browsers or logging in.
As with any software application there are downsides to Digsby as well. One of the major downsides is the security aspect. As the system leeches on all of your networks, it would be quite easy for someone with malicious motives to get access to all of your information and contacts. I'm sure Digsby has implemented security protocols which makes it difficult for this to happen but make sure you lock your computer or logout of Digsby when you leave your workstation as the easiest way for someone to get into your network would be to use your own computer when you are not watching.
Having said that, I find Digsby a great tool as it will allow me to manage multiple email accounts even under the same service provider without logging off of one before logging onto the other. To me this alone is worth the gamble.
Oh by the way Digsby is totally free to use.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
