Therefore, it becomes really important for a user to be up and about and have his preferred chat clients handy. However, since a user may be active on multiple messaging networks, sometimes it gets really, really tough to juggle Skype, Google Talk, MSN, and the many others available as each may require a user to download and install their individual clients.

This is where IMO.im steps in. If you are a Google Chrome user, you can use IMO.im to seamlessly stay connected to all your chat networks at once. No more unnecessary installation of software required. No more irritating configuration dialog boxes, and more importantly peace of mind for the user.

The first thing you will need to do is get hold of Google Chrome. Do that by clicking this link. Next, head over to the Chrome Extensions Gallery and install the IMO.im Google Chrome Extension.

Once installed, you will see the following icon next to the address bar (or omnibar) in Chrome.

Click on the icon shown to continue setting up your networks. You will be greeted with the screen below. Click either of the two links in the text to head over to the imo.im website.

What occurs next is the beauty of using IMO.im. At the IMO.im website, you are not required to go through any complex signup procedures in order to get yourself up and running. What you can do instead, is use your existing login credentials for various networks to sign in. Click one of the many networks supported and login using your credentials for that network.

You will then be taken to a dashboard, from where you can setup additional networks so that you can use all of them simultaneously. This you can do under the Accounts panel on the left hand side of the screen. Once you have additional accounts configured, you have the option oflinking them together so that you can sign in using any of your configured accounts and get access to all of your accounts.

The right hand side displays your unified buddy list. Use this to get chatting with all your friends. However, thanks to the Chrome extension you just installed, you will find that you rarely ever have to use this page again apart for account configuration.

Now comes the easy part. Whenever you need to chat with a buddy, all you have to do is click on that icon we showed you above. This will bring up the screen below, which will allow you to change your status as well as chat with all your friends, without ever having to leave the page you are browsing currently.

To chat with someone, simply enter their name in the search box and if they are online, select their name to start chatting. Whenever you click on your current page, the box will disappear, and remind you of a new message using a very short, unobtrusive sound, as well as a notification window at the bottom right of the screen (which you can get to by clicking the same button as before). In case you are busy with multiple buddies, each of them will show up in their own tabs in this same window. Below you can see me chatting with a friend using IMO.im

There are a few settings that you can change using the IMO.im Preferences link found at the top of your dashboard when you first sign in. This includes settings for saving a chat history, disabling emoticons, selecting one of thirteen color schemes, etc.

Before I started using IMO.im, my life was a mess of installing numerous chat clients, or finding one universal client that (such as this and these) would let me access all my contacts easily. However, with the goodness of Google Chrome and this extension, I can now spend more time doing what I want to do as well as stay in touch with my friends.

The best part of this is that the whole process is very unobtrusive. One click outside the chat window and the window fades out. One click on the extension icon again and I have all my chats ready to go (and they remain consistent across all Chrome tabs, so there’s no back-and-forth switching of tabs). All this without the need of any additional software. Let us know about your IMO.im experience below.