FriendFeed ‘s all about adding the new features these days, as Steven Hodson pointed out in this post about the value (or lack thereof) of the new mapping option that popped up this week. Now, another function has come out of the woodwork. This one, though, could actually come in handy.
The feature, announced just this afternoon , is called FriendFeed Over IM . It lets you interact with your FriendFeed via Google Talk or Jabber, similar to the functions some third-party utilities have offered in the past. This way, if you don’t keep FriendFeed open at all times but are signed in to one of those IM services, you can still keep up with activity on your account.
First, FriendFeed Over IM can send you notifications when there are new posts or comments in your feed. But you can talk back, too. Once you activate the feature, the following commands will work from your IM program:
- @me message: Post a new message to your feed
- @me: List the entries in your feed
- @roomname message: Post a new message to the room with nickname roomname
- @roomname: List the entries in the room with nickname roomname
- @N comment: Comment on entry N. When you receive entry and comment notifications via IM, they are all prefixed with @N. You can reply to them by prefixing your comment with the same @N.
- @N: Show entry N. Useful when you get a comment on @N and you want to see the original post.
- like N: Like entry N
- @nickname: List the entries in the the given user’s feed
- pause: Pause IM notifications
- resume: Resume IM notifications
- list: List the most recent entries you have received via IM
- help: Print the list of IM commands
You can enable FriendFeed Over IM in your FriendFeed account settings.