AOL Bridges AIM and ICQ

Checkmate3 writes "Looks like AOL has finally made good on plans to integrate ICQ and AIM... eWeek talks about a new version of ICQ which will allow for users to message across the two networks." I have to agree with the sentiments expressed in the article. I can't remember the last time I used ICQ, or even what my number was.

Comments

Someone's gonna say it...

[Alranor]

so it might as well be me.


Use Trillian , it rocks.

Re:Someone's gonna say it...

[Jugalator]

Not really -- it doesn't support international characters from other IM's correctly, that's said to be due to poor UTF-8 support (which pretty much all other IM's support and use). This bug has been silently ignored by the developers for around a year by now. For example messages received from ICQ Lite has its international characters removed

This for a commercial software.

Miranda is both free (as in beer) and open source, and has no problems whatsoever with international characters, while also offering far more plugins than both Trillian and Gaim.

Miranda

[eddy]

I like Miranda better. Miranda just gets everything right. Light-weight by default, and plugins for everything else.

I couldn't even find the source-code for trillan. Is it available? If not, Miranda wins _hands_ down since it's GPLed.

Too bad it's Windows only though.

Jabber

[wazlaf]

I have given up on ICQ/AIM a long time ago. I now use Jabber for all IM needs. Seriously, I recommend it to everyone who is currently using ICQ or AIM. There are transports which can connect you to your previous network so that you don't loose connectivity to your friends.

Or you could go open source...

[imtheguru]

... and use Gaim, for Linux and Windows. Has capability to connect to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu(?) and IRC networks.

Cheers,

What's so wrong with ICQ?

[Draeven]

Personally, I can't stand AIM. I haven't used it in a while, but when I did, It had no automatic logging feature, messages popped up automatically screwing with what I was doing, the Away feature didn't allow you to speak to people and remain in Away mode, the idle detector was an invasion of privacy and personally, I feel the program was bloated.

Since the ads came, ICQ hasn't been any better.

The answer? Miranda IM (http://www.miranda-im.org/)

Comes default with ICQ support, and plugins are available for AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and other such protocols. You can also get plugins to manipulate many of the behaviors of the program. Everything from new message interface windows to ALICE chatbots.

I don't mean to sound like an advertisement, but I feel Miranda is far superiour to ICQ or AIM's clients, and Trillian for that matter. Trillian != free, thus I cannot afford it. =P

Re:Thank God

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll. Well not really, and it got marked up to insightful for some reason. Way to go, moderators. Now if you'll all put down the crack pipe and read the following:

Hey, guess what? You don't have to install ICQ to talk to ICQ users. You could use one of the many Jabber clients available to you, though I don't prefer them myself. Programs such as Trillian and the free, open-source GAIM allow you to simultaneously connect to various different IM networks with relative ease now, and despite not supporting the entire feature set of these networks in the case of GAIM, is certainly preferable to having a client installed per each network.

There's also the web pager and web chat room (http://wwp.icq.com/#######, where the # signs are for the number of the user you want to contact). Send them a pager message letting them know you want to talk in their web chat, and away you go.

There's -also- a Java client on the ICQ page (over here), which you can use from just about anywhere if all you want to do is get through to people on ICQ, but the above alternatives are preferable in most cases.

There's also..oh, hey. You're probably not even reading this anyway, are you troll? You got your cute little jab in, and you've probably moved off to harass some other group. Sorry to have wasted your time with reasonable discussion.

ICQ- what happened?

[Traderdot]

Seven or eight years ago, everyone I knew used ICQ. Gradually, people shifted to AIM. I still don't know how that happened but at some point AIM reached critical mass and most people I knew dumped ICQ entirely.

ICQ had more features (able to msg people offline) and AIM was and is relatively featureless. Maybe that's what people like. Just the basics.

In any case, I use Trillian to log on to all the different services at once. (Jabber is another option).

For those of you complaining about ICQ bloat, there's ICQ Lite (link is to the alpha version that can communicate with AIM)

This isn't new

[rit]

You've been "Bridged" for ages.

ICQ uses the AOL network.

Type your ICQ # and Password into ANY AIM Client, for example the sidekick which I know works, and connect.

AIM loads you in, loads all of your buddies, etc.

If you use GAIM, there is no AIM plugin or ICQ - there's one called AIM/ICQ.

Same protocol...happend ages ago =)

Why did you stop using ICQ?

[rosewood]

Silly rabbits! ICQ > MSN, AOL, YIM

Why? Logging and Offline messages! I use trillian as my client so I dont have to have multiple programs but I prefer to chat over ICQ over any of the others.

The ability to send someone a message if they are online is just great. The fact that AIM and MSN can not do this makes these two services quite frankly SUCK.

Also, last time I checked, icq was the only im client that logged all chats by default.

If you have an ICQ spam problem, just block messages from people not on your list. I havent gotten an ICQ spam in quite some time.