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Writings on technology and society from Wellington, New Zealand

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Staying connected – Adium 1.3 and Skype

I use instant messaging (IM) from time to time, but I really can’t be fished with the half a dozen or so different IM clients you are supposed to install to cover the different IM services. That’s why I love Adium.Adium Logo

Adium is a very nice open source Mac IM client. It does far more different IM services than iChat, which Apple provides. Adium does nearly every services out there, presenting all your contacts and chats through the same interface, with the exception of (and this is a biggie) Skype IM. Helpful New Zealander Eion Robb fixed that for everyone some time ago with his Skype plugin for Adium, and that made Adium cover every IM service I was interested in. Bravo.

Recently, Adium has moved to version 1.3, and a fine version upgrade it seems as well, giving you access to Facebook chat among other things. The problem is that the upgrade breaks the Skype plugin, so someone upgrading Adium in the normal course of things loses connectivity to their Skype-only contacts.

Happily, this is easy to fix. You need to:

  1. download the latest plugin
  2. double-click the zip file it arrives in (you get a plugin file)
  3. right-click the plugin file and select “Show Package Contents”
  4. a Finder instance opens showing what’s inside, open the “Contents” folder
  5. open the
    info.plist

    file by double-clicking, then open the section marked “root” by clicking the triangle

  6. You can now see a list of “properties” and their values. We’re going to edit a couple. You need the value of
    CFBundleVersion

    to read 1.3. Double-click the number and retype as necessary.

  7. You also need to add a new value. Click the CFBundleversion property then press the button “New Sibling”. Then change its proerty to read
    AIMinimumAdiumVersionRequirement

    and set the value to 1.3

  8. Now just quit out of the Property Editor (red jellybean, you know the drill), close the Finder, then double-click on the SkypePlugin to install. (NB – stop Adium and Skype before you do this.) Works for me!

Thanks to the good folks at adiumxtras for this.

posted by colin at 10:32 am  

6 Comments

  1. For somebody with such a fondness for open standards, I’m surprised to see you get so attached to Skype.

    Comment by Lawrence D'Oliveiro — 3 September 2008 @ 10:12 am

  2. I know what you mean – it’s hardly open. But some of my friends and contacts use Skype and so I need to if I am to stay in touch with them. Colin

    Comment by colin — 3 September 2008 @ 4:37 pm

  3. Hmm. Just discovered the Skype plugin the other day. Tried this, but it didn’t work.

    Comment by Philip — 5 September 2008 @ 8:05 am

  4. Worked a treat! Thank you!

    Comment by Mike — 15 September 2008 @ 10:16 pm

  5. When I double click on the info.plist fil eit opens in text editor.
    So I’m not quite sure what you mean when you talk about ‘clicking the triangle’ and ‘pressing the new sibling button’.
    So I need to open the info.plist file with a specific sort of software?

    Thanks.
    Damien

    Comment by dazza — 16 September 2008 @ 12:24 am

  6. Damien

    Sounds like .plist files aren’t opening in the property editor by default for you.

    There should a program on your Mac called the “Property List Editor”. You can use Spotlight to find it and run it. Then use the menu to open the info.plist file and you should the “root” section as descrtibed under step 5 above.

    Cheers

    Colin

    Comment by colin — 16 September 2008 @ 10:01 am

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