Yuuguu review

With a number of instant messaging platforms around, it can seem like you need to sign up to all of them simply to keep in touch.

Yuuguu is a cross-platform instant messaging client that can hook up the contacts from your instant messaging network. This means you can keep your favourite client and still share features with people on other networks like IRQ and MSN.

The most compelling feature in Yuuguu's arsenal is the ability to share a screen and allow a remote user to control your machine. Of course, if you're connecting two Macs then iChat already does this, but Yuuguu lets you cross the divide and control a PC or Linux machine.

Setup is simply a case of downloading the application and adding your network to Yuuguu. All your contacts will show in a list and you message them in the usual way. To share your screen you simply start a chat and click the Show button.

The recipient gets a web link that when clicked opens your screen in a browser. From here it can be viewed or controlled, with your permission. You can also audio chat but this costs and requires you to call a separate number.

Yuuguu seems like an application that's solving a problem only very few people have. Enabling people to connect different IM networks together without changing clients is a useful idea, but in practice is it really such a huge issue? If your business relies upon remote working then you should probably be using a single client and network.

Charging for audio is a bit pointless too, as Skype will quite happily do this for free. If you do need to work with someone on a PC then the screen sharing option is nice, but that's as far as it goes.

As an IM and collaboration tool Yuuguu is perfectly adequate, but we really can't see any compelling reason to adopt it.