Chit Chat is a free Facebook chat instant messenger (IM) that allows you to chat with your Facebook friends from your desktop.

Chit Chat is a facebook chat client,it connects to Facebook and removes the need of a web-browser to talk over Facebook Chat.

Chit Chat Features:

• Fun and Free – Convenient and fun way to chat with your Facebook contacts without the hassle of surfing Facebook
• Free Your Web-Browser – No need to keep your web browser logged into Facebook
• Easy To Use – Download, install and then login with your Facebook username and password – easy!
• Popular? – Swift and fast tabbed chat Interface making it easy to talk with many Facebook friends at once
• Instant Message Notification – Lets you know when you receive an instant message.

Download Chit Chat

There are times when you want to connect to the Internet through unknown and/or insecure networks such as the local Panera or other WiFi hotspot. If you aren’t careful, you might make it all too easy for someone to sniff your connection using Ettercap.

One of the best ways to secure your connection is to use a VPN, but that isn’t always practical. So here’s a way to securely connect to the net using only an SSH client and a remote box that you control/trust.

Requirements:

1. PuTTY* loaded on your local machine
2. Remote host running OpenSSH (e.g. Linux box at home)
3. Firefox (obviously)
4. Gaim for all your IM needs

Just follow these steps…

1. Create a new PuTTY session
Run PuTTY and create a new session in PuTTY to connect to the remote host that is running OpenSSH. Fill in the hostname, the port (usually 22), make sure SSH is checked, give it a session name and hit Save:

2. Configure a secure tunnel
Click on “Tunnels” on the left and set up dynamic fowarding for a local port (e.g. 7070). Under “Add new forwarded port” type in 7070 for the source port, leave the destination blank, and check Auto and Dynamic. Then it the Add button. If you did it correctly, you’ll see D7070 listed in the Forwarded Ports box:

That’s it for tunnels, as there is no need to create more than one. Remember to save your session profile in PuTTY so you don’t have to set up the tunnel next time.

3. Connect to the remote SSH box
Double click on the connection profile and type in your username and password when prompted.

4. Configure Firefox
Go to Tools, Options, General, and then click on Connection Settings…

Check Manual Proxy Configuration, leave most of the fields blank, but fill in 127.0.0.1 for the SOCKS v5 host with a port of 7070 (or whatever you used in Step 2):

5. Configure Gaim
Fire up Gaim and hit the Preferences button:

Then select Network on the left and set up the Proxy Server. The Proxy Type should be SOCKS 5. The host is 127.0.0.1 and the port is 7070 (or whatever you chose in Step 2).

There’s no need for a user or password. Then hit close.

6. Enjoy
That’s it. From now on, as long as you first log into the remote ssh host with PuTTY, your Firefox and IM traffic will be routed over a secure tunnel to the remote host and then out to the Net. Good stuff.

* Yes, PuTTY is available for Linux. It’s even in Portage!

Update (Email): Actually, the setup for Thunderbird to securely proxy your email traffic is pretty much the same as it is for Firefox.

And then type in 127.0.0.1 and your port number:

That’s it.

Update: Getting some linkage from Digg.

Corrections/Addendum:

1. Note that this method will secure your connection between your remote location (e.g. WiFi hotspot) and the ssh host (e.g. Linux box at home). It is not secure from the ssh host to Internet. For the most part, that’s OK as it will provide reasonable protection from people running packet sniffers at the hotspot. But please recognize that if your ssh host is on your cable connection at home, your ISP can still (obviously) easily sniff all your packets.
2. Quite a few people have correctly pointed out that DNS queries will still be “leaked” to the untrusted network. So the names of any sites you visit will still get logged.Now if you don’t mind people knowing what sites your are connecting to, then there’s nothing to worry about. But if are running the current version of Firefox and would like to protect that information, you can open the about:config page, and change network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true.You can do the same thing in Thunderbird if you would like.For a greater level of security on all your connections, you should consider running a full VPN (see also: IPCop + OpenVPN HOWTO).
3. As Nate pointed out in the comments, if you have the command-line version of OpenSSH already installed on your computer, you don’t need to mess with PuTTY. Just run ssh -D 7070 user@host.example.com and that will set up your tunnel. I’m not an Apple user, but I think OS X has everything you need.
4. There are portable versions of Firefox, Gaim, and Thunderbird, and PuTTY runs from a USB drive. So using this method (unlike using OpenVPN) there is no need to install anything on the computer you are using. Quite handy if you are borrowing someone’s computer or you are in a school computer lab.
5. How do you know if it’s working? Personally, I used SmartSniff to look at the packets and make sure they looked encrypted and were on the right ports. Of course, any packet sniffer would do.The other method (and I tried this one too) is to get all set up and running with the tunnels. And then after it is apparently working, kill PuTTY and see if you lose the connection.Of the two, the packet sniffer is the better way to go.
6. Apparently Opera only does SOCK4. I didn’t personally try it, but this should work with SOCKS4 proxies as well as SOCKS5.
7. SocksCap (non-commercial, home-use only) will let you run just about anything over a SOCKS5 proxy.

Chinese:http://www.chedong.com/blog/archives/001246.html (利用Putty通过ssh端口转发实现FireFox和MSN加密代理访问)

[via thinkhole.org]

Instant messenging users who don’t like the overhead of downloading an IM client should checkout a new beta download called Yahoo Messenger for Web. The new service from Yahoo lets users partake in the text chat features of standard Yahoo IM but lacks file transfer, voice calls and web cam capabilities.

The web-based IM service is built using Adobe Flash technology and, like the download version, is interoperable with Windows Live Messenger and can be accessed from any of the four most popular browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

The browser-based Yahoo IM service, the first to hit the market from one of the major IM providers, frees users to acccess their IM accounts from any computer with Internet access and a browser installed.

Yahoo is touting the service as particularly applicable to users who don’t own a computer and for workers at companies that disallow downloads. The implication is that the service opens up the possibility for people in lower income brackets to partake in IM.

According to Yahoo, it intends to rollout Yahoo Messenger for Web initially to South East Asia, a region with high Internet penetration but low PC ownership. Cyber cafes are especially popular in places like the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand and Yahoo stands to gain a significant new audience from clientele without access to the net in their homes.