I’m a Firefox kind of guy. Long before IE7, I was in love with the functionality of multiple tabs in the same window. I was introduced to Firefox by Todd when we first started working together some years ago. I was lustful for all the add-ons, and I relished the rapidly vanishing programs cluttering my taskbar that inevitably accompanied any long day of using IE. My love affair with Firefox has lasted for quite some time. But as much as the functionality of multiple tabs has engrained itself into my psyche, there was a wonderful tool out there that had eluded my attention until recently. And having recently begun this labor of love of a company, I came to realize that this beautiful, buxom tool had seduced its way onto my computer; and into my heart. That tool, my friends, is Digsby. And like any true love, what started out as an infatuation has rapidly become a soul-mate. I’m starting to wonder how I ever lived and loved without it.

A few weeks back I was chatting on AIM with Shawn, our resident Social Media Manager. I don’t recall exactly how the conversation came about, but I was mentioning something about the confusion of having multiple chat windows open in multiple messengers. Shawn mentioned something about Digsby. Little did I know that this small conversation would be my introduction with the love of my life. Shawn went on to discuss what Digsby was essentially explaining that it was a one stop portal for each and nearly every e-mail, messenger and social media account that one could ask for. I began to salivate when thinking about just my hotmail accounts alone. I have one that I created nearly 15 years ago while in the Navy, one created by my College, one that I run various fantasy leagues on, one that I …. you get the point. For this reason alone, I was looking forward to not having to log in and then out to check multiple accounts. It was only after I downloaded and began running Digsby did I realize that this was only the tip of the iceberg.

I downloaded Digsby and began the set up process. I started adding my accounts. The process to me was reminiscent of a third date after you’ve had a great meal, enjoyed a nice film, and have gone back to her apartment for “coffee”… it was really starting to get hot and heavy. I was telling Digsby all my innermost personal secrets. I was letting her into all of my e-mail accounts, and my Social Media Profiles. She in turn undressed to reveal to me everything that she was made of. Within minutes, I was ready to propose. Short of packing me a lunch with a cute note for work the next day and rubbing my back after a tough day, Digsby appeared to be to be the perfect Soul-Mate.

A great visual interface aside, the true beauty of Digsby is the fact that I have everything in front of me in real time. One click. That’s it. One single click. With that lone solitary click, I had in front of me a real time view of every e-mail account, Social Media profile and instant messenger. I was flabbergasted. In real time, the virtual world of contact and Social Media was presenting itself to me in a number of innocuous pop up windows. Instant message from Shawn_Rosko about an upcoming presentation… check. @WebMasterRadio is now following me on Twitter… check, check!! I have an e-mail from my pop mail server from a perspective client… check, check, check!!! All of my accounts were right there, neatly displayed on a sidebar with great functionality. A simple mouseover showed me my message. A click allowed me to reply, or tweet. Now, I’m not going to lie here, I started to cry a little bit. The same kind of “triumph of the human spirit” victorious tears that one may find upon watching the final 10 minutes of “Rudy.” I was in love with a girl named Digsby and she was treating me right.

I tried to quantify what kind of tool Digsby really was, so I did some timing. Using a Dell Latitude D520 on a Cable DSL connection, I found that it took me 40 seconds or so to log in to one Hotmail account, browse my inbox, log out, and log back in to a 2^nd account. I had been doing this approximately 3 or 4 times a day for a total of 3 minutes. Logging into Twtter from the same tab and scanning that inbox added another 20 seconds. Moving over to LinkedIn took another… you know what, nevermind. I’m not going to bore you. The bottom line is that I was saving 10-15 minutes a day for simply logging in and logging out. That’s about 60-90 hours a year! Seriously, that’s between 2-4 days of your life every year spent logging in and out of accounts! I wondered what to do with that extra time that Digsby has afforded me. So I decided: I’m going to take a long weekend and go to Sandals and I’m going to propose to Digsby!