I’ve been a fan of Meebo for awhile now. I love the fact that I can use all my Instant Message Accounts (MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL/AIM, and Jabber/GTalk) all on one webpage. It’s a very slick site and gets better every week. If you use Instant Messaging and have to keep track of many contacts and accounts, it is a must-have (and it’s free). While many people only use one Instant Message platform, like AIM or MSN, if you network at all internationally, you quickly discover the regional preferences; while AIM is massively popular in the US, most Europeans prefer MSN Messenger. Many techies prefer Jabber, or Google’s Jabber client GTalk. It’s fairly easy to collect contacts using all the major Instant Messaging platforms fairly quickly.

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Ajax, for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a collection of web development tools used to create Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Ajax allows web browsers to interact with web servers via small requests and update the loaded web page without actually reloading the entire page after each request. This gives the site an immediate increase in its appearance of interactivity, a significant speed boost, as the web server only has to process much smaller transactions, and a usability edge over repeatedly reloaded static pages.

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Tags: web development tools, Rich Internet Applications, Ajax, usability