Xfire is an aim-like chat client for gamers. It lets you immediately know what your friends are playing, and allows you to join them on whatever server they’re on. Just right click your friend’s name and select “Join Game”. If you have the game installed Xfire boots it up and automatically logs you into that particular server. Very cool.

Recently they’ve added in-game chat support that lets you communicate to your friends while playing. It’s a toggled option. To bring up the chat window - hit scroll lock + x. Scroll lock == Brilliant! Now - there’s only a subset of popular titles that in-game messaging works in, but that list has been expanding pretty quickly.

They’ve also added a mini profile feature which you can stick on your website or in messege signatures. It looks like this and dynamically updates itself while you’re playing:

Although you can’t upload your own profile pic there are over 550 of these cartoony game oriented avatar images to chose from. In the stack I recognized characters from Soul Caliber, Quake 3, South Park, Anime, Marvel comics, etc.

I don’t know if they’re privately funded or what. They’re doing some pretty damn cool stuff if you ask me.