I really hate distractions and interrupts, but nowadays I am very busy that I begin to lose contacts with my close friends. Chatting although annoying to me but at least an initiation channel that could lead to phone calls or meetings. I found pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) a nice tool that can read many protocols at the same time. Here a list of supported protocols:

1. AIM
2. MSN
3. Google Talk
4. ICQ
5. Yahoo!
6. IRC

And other protocols also:

• Groupwise, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC,SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, and Zephyr

Pretty more than I need, I just have accounts for Yahoo, Google, and hotmail. Now I am connecting to all my friends at once.

I want also to mention that, it is a GNU software. Enjoy the open source movement!