Meebo...
It's been a while since we first covered Meebo and while it's not in my top 5 list of all things IM, it's without doubt on the "must have list". The great thing about Meebo is that no download is required.. all you need to do is spring open your browser, head along to http://www.meebo.com, login with your Meebo account (or directly via your pre-existing IM accounts ) and you suddenly have access to all your Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, GoogleTalk and Jabber buddies. Meebo is simplicity in its finest form, it's elegant, beautifully functional and very intuitive so anyone can use it... a newbie or an experienced IM'r... and its because of this that Meebo gained a huge following and is one of the most popular browser based IMs around today...

In the early days one of the big drawcards, but certainly not the only reason, for ppl to use Meebo was that it was relatively unheard of, as such, a lot of system admins who block all Instant Messenger activity (via download, installation or browser) were not aware that Meebo even existed so they never blocked access to it... this caused Meebo to get a strong foothold as ppl became aware that they could now turn up and work / school and once again have full unrestricted IM contact with all their Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, GoogleTalk and Jabber buddies all via a browser.. but then system admins started to twig to what was going on.. they aren't daft you know ;) ... so suddenly more and more ppl found that they were once again IM-less and Meebo access was all stitched up... or was it?

On 19 May 2006 (mentioned in their blog posting practice safe meebo) Meebo released the Meebo Repeater which (instantly) thrilled an awful lot of ppl, simply because once the repeater was installed on an unrestricted PC (like their home computer), they could once again access Meebo from some (now) restricted areas like work, school, etc. What the repeater does is turn your home PC into a middle man of sorts.. you turn up at work, want to connect to Meebo but your server admin has blocked all outgoing access to it, so you connect to your home PC via your browser (using the URL the repeater provides), this in turns re-routes you to the Meebo website where you once again have full unrestricted access to all your Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, GoogleTalk and Jabber buddies friends.... but does it?

When the Meebo Repeater first came out we heard a lot of great things about it.. mostly from ppl who were thrilled they suddenly had full IM contact at school /work again ;) now we are hearing that the repeater isn't redirecting correctly, the most recent thread in their forum (Meebo Repeater No Longer Working) also seems to indicate this... in all fairness to Meebo though, their blog entry does state "It was fun to build and it’s an experimental project (so no guarantees)" ... but it would still be nice to know if it's on the cards to be addressed or if it's still going to be an ongoing project... if you have had a response from Meebo Support or still have a full functioning Meebo Repeater in place it would be great if you could let us know... if only because we are just plain nosey :D