Oddly, I was just asked a question that also routinely shows up in my stats, as keywords people use to find my website. I say “odd” because I I’ve never answered this question, but Google keeps finding me, anyway.So, the question: a patron walks in and says, “I want to do IM chat at work, but my company blocks AOL and the others. I used meebo for awhile, but they just blocked it this week. What are some other sites like meebo I can use?”

I kind of laughed, and so did she, because she knows she’s doing something wrong. But I can’t judge, so I searched the internet and found a posting on the Big Blue Ball forum that listed a few. They are:

• meebo - https://meebo.com/
• WebAIM - http://webaim.net/
• eBuddy - http://www.ebuddy.com/#AOL
• QuickBuddy - http://toc.oscar.aol.com/tic.html
• ILoveIM - http://iloveim.com/
• Kool IM - http://koolim.com/

I haven’t used most of these, but the patron was very happy. She says it takes her I.T. people about a month to block new sites, so she should be set for about a year with this list.

Also interesting, the Blue Ball posting pointed out that “most schools/offices allow access to secure http sites by bypassing the firewall/proxy; meebo has https access.” Huh.

chat, ebuddy, iloveim, im, kool im, libraries, library, meebo, public libraries, public library, quickbuddy, reference question, webaim

See Also

• Reference Question of the Week - 2/24/08
• Reference Question of the Week - 12/9/07
• Reference Question of the Week - 11/25/07
• Reference Question of the Week - 11/11/07
• Reference Question of the Week - 11/4/07

Posted under Library, Reference Question, Technology on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 1:52 pm, by Brian Herzog. Post and comments available via the RSS 2.0 feed. Please leave a response, or trackback from your own site.