The world of Instant Messaging is a mess. Countless protocols, friends on different networks and other complications make IM a potential hassle. Which is why we've always recommended the multi-protocol, all-in-one IM apps, Adium for Mac and Pidgin for Windows.
But desktop apps aren't for everyone, which is why I thought I'd point out a great little tutorial over on Lifehacker that walks through the steps necessary to set up the Google Talk widget in GMail as a multi-protocol messaging client.
If you're thinking that sounds too go to be true, you're half right. It does work, though some people have reported problems un-installing the hack, but the main problem is that you'll need to rely on a third party Jabber client to do some forwarding for you. That means your IMs will be visible to a third party. Depending on your paranoia levels and the nature of your chats, that may be a problem.
However, if that doesn't bother you (and if you're already sending unencrypted e-mail through GMail I can't see why it would) setting up GTalk to handle other IM services is surprisingly simple.
You'll need to grab the cross-platform Jabber client Psi, though you only need to use it once. You'll also need to set up a Jabber transport server, but otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. See Lifehacker for the full details.
