Adium X is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that allows user to connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messenger and lot more chat applications. Adium X was voted on of the top ten freeware for the Mac OS! But almost as popular as the application itself is the duck that represents it. Originally apple green, the Adium Duck now comes in a variety of colors. Now that the Adium Duck is starting to bloom into a beautiful pop icon, we felt this is a good time to tell you the true story behind the little green duck.

The duck hatched from Adam Iser's (the author of Adium X) imagination. And he wasn't green then. In fact, he wasn't that cute! The Adium Duck was kinda like an ugly blue duckling. Yes, that's him above. The one that looks like a wooden decoy duck choking on a snail. Thank goodness Iser is better at making applications than drawing icons.

Anyway, Adam Betts gave the blue duck a drastic make-over. "I loved the posture and felt that I can give it a much needed soul and feathers. I donÂ?t remember exactl y how Adam Iser reacted, but I do remember that he disliked it at first but it grew on him later." Yeah, what is it about this duck that makes you stare at it longingly..filled with animal passion...or is it just us?

According to Betts the key element of the duck is his eyes which seem to say Â?Why me worry?Â? The duck's job is to transport your messages to your friends/families, he wants none of your attention. Awwww...but we have so much love and care to give him!

But those come hither eyes are now proving a challenge for Betts. It seems the duck is due for an update to keep up with the new Apple app icon family. Bett tried to turn him into photorealistic graphic but says that "destroyed that message by being in your face with a three-dimensional head. The original Adium soul you know and love would not exist anymore. Another thing that did not work is real feathers."

Betts also took the OS X icon route (documents lying on desk, speech bubble, etc.) but he thinks those icons are beneath the duck. After trying out several ideas, Bett had a lightbulb moment: "Why should I change something that had a strong hand in developing the strong Adium community?" And what about us Adium Duck fans who spend hours customizing our duck with costumes instead of doing things like making this world a better place?

Have no fear, Quack Patrol! The shape of refreshed Adium icon will be nearly identical to current one so there wonÂ?t be much changes needed!

Adium X is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that allows user to connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber (including Google Talk), Yahoo Messenger, Bonjour (compatible with iChat), Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise and Lotus Sametime. If you think that's a lot of chattime, this freeware is also available in Brazilian, Portuguese, Canadian English, Australian English, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Spanish and Swedish! No wonder Adium X was voted on of the top ten freeware for the Mac OS!

Anyways, the good people behind Adium X has updated it to v.1.0b3 and its changelog includes:

• Fixed a crash when closing message windows
• Fixed connecting to AIM on non-default port settings
• Fixed MSN HTTP connect method
• Fixed a rare crash involving invalid idle times
• Fixed a crash when connecting with a SOCKS4 proxy over AIM
• Fixed a crash when connecting to gadu-gadu
• Fixed the Run Applescript action (#4456)
• Fixed a crash in the log viewer on OS X 10.3

However, this is still a beta and things may not always work properly. But if you still want to go give it a try you can download it right here at QJ. Adium X requires Mac OS X 10.2.7 ("Jaguar") or later; Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") or Mac OS X 10.3.9 ("Panther") is recommended. Adium X 0.88 and later are Universal applications which run natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macintosh computers.

Download [Adium X v1.0b3]