If you can't bear to be out of touch with your Facebook buddies for more than a few minutes then you might like to try out fim.

fim (Facebook Instant Messenger) is a tool that optimizes the Facebook Chat service for Windows Mobile devices. To set the program up, you need only insert your Facebook account details and fim will display a neat list of who is online along with each person's profile picture and current status.

Using fim to chat couldn't be easier. Just tap on the person you want to speak to and a chat window will appear where you can just start exchanging messages. Unfortunately, the chat features in fim are very thin on the ground (as is true of Facebook Chat itself), so don't expect anything fancy like emoticons, file sharing, or picture messaging.

Aside from instant messaging, fim also lets you access other areas of Facebook, such as Home, Notifications and, rather neatly, Phonebook, from where you can call people with a single click on their number. The presentation of Facebook in fim is rather clunky and doesn't really offer that much advantage over browsing the site in Internet Explorer.

fim does its job without any fuss, but if you want the best Facebook IM experience on your Pocket PC I'd recommend something like fring or Nimbuzz over this one.

Download fim 2.2.8.0 in Softonic

When I was a boy, the only way of getting in touch with someone was to phone them up, write them a letter, or go to their house. These days though, there are countless different new ways to communicate thanks to email, instant messaging, VoIP, social networks, and the like.

This is great, but it does pose problems in that it's often difficult to work out the best way to reach someone. You might have separate buddy lists for Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo!, MSN, and Facebook, and constantly logging in, launching apps and finding your online pals can be a real chore. fring is designed to change all that, providing you with a single platform, based on your mobile, where all of your online friends are available in one place.

fring supports most of the major chat services including Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo!, and AIM. You can also use the program to check Facebook updates, view Twitter feeds, and even listen to music with friends on Last.fm.

fring is simple to install and set up. Once you've registered for a fring account you can import your online contacts very easily. You just go to the 'Add-ons' section, click a service you want to access (e.g. Skype, Yahoo!) and sign in using your normal log-in for that account. The contacts are automatically pulled into fring and displayed in the main window, and you can quickly view who is online and who isn't.

Not only can you chat via instant messages but fring also lets you make cheap or free calls to your buddies via SkypeOut/SkypeIn. This means you can ring people from your phone's contacts locally or internationally, at vastly reduced rates. Of course, you'll need to be in a WiFi hotspot for this to be of any benefit but thankfully, fring comes with a tool for automatically logging you into your favorite hotspots.

There are a few extra chat features of note within fring, such as file transfer and a history view. However, its functionality is still vastly inferior to what you'd expect from most of the chat services themselves. For instance, there are no emoticons, games, video conferencing, etc.

Overall though, fring makes for a great way to manage all of your contacts on all of your networks from one, easy-to-use application.

Download fring 3.40 Beta in Softonic