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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.
as icq still is the dominant IM around here
-- never underestimate someone who overestimates himself
The idea behind ICQ is good (it was the first popular personal IM system, after all (and no, IRC doesn't really count as one)), but the client has sucked ass for years. ICQ has been on the ever decline since it was bought by AOL - and that was a looong time ago. The client kept getting bigger, more bloated and buggier, but the recruitment of new people to the network has just kept dropping (probably because of the client). This move is probably exactly what's needed to save ICQ, and to keep MSN from conquering the market.
I was on the verge of giving up ICQ myself (but not to move to another network, since my buddies were all on ICQ), when I found Miranda IM. Open source, fast, small, and even interoperable with ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, you name it. I've never even looked at the official client since then...
i used to use ICQ but its very crash happy on a Mac but the OSX bundled IM program is AIM compatible isn't it? does that mean i can now use iChat to contact people on ICQ networks?
That was my UIN (still is, incidentally, on Trillian). Man, those were the days.
I remember being able to log in and not be spammed to death by random people (either "ASL?! I WANT TO SEX YUO" or sales for penis pumps). I also loved the interface, where sending messages was more "e-mail" than "instant messaging". It let people come up with more eloquent responses to one another, rather than firing off one liners. NOw everyone gets impatient or thinks you went offline if you take more than 30 seconds to reply to anything.
Did I mention the program was relatively bloatfree back in those days? You know, before they turned it into a Swiss Army Knife with stupid features no one uses. Activelists? Come on now.
Ahh, but then everyone I knew switched to MSN (duude, it's soo simpler!), and the days of eloquent messaging were gone, washed away by that fucking butterfly.
Sigh...
*puts an away message on Trillian and goes to work*
hookers and grits.
Interesting question. I think at first when someone starts a project it is a lot of fun. When you have your first regular users, everything is good. Then you start to get people who make ask for features. It usually starts with something like "Oh I can't use your software until it does [feature]" O.K, thats fine, it doesn't do that. Maybe in a future release, you tell them. Your userbase grows and you're still having fun. You're bug fixing a lot more now but thats O.K, people appreicate the bug fixes. But now you begin getting demands from users who think you're there to do what they want "Why doesn't [software] have [feature]? You said you were going to do it months ago!" they cry. You explain that you're busy with something else and don't have time right now. You suggest that maybe someone else could do it and send a patch. That works the first few times but eventually people can't be bothered to send patches for every feature that is demanded, or there arn't enough developers to do them. You get more new users demanding more new features. Not asking politly now, but demanding! "This doesn't have [feature]! I can't believe you havn't done [feature]! Xyz.org have had [feature] for months! You suck!" You stop answering those emails because no one is willing to help out and send a patch. Then the idiots who don't appreciate what you're doing just start flaming you for not having that feature and because "You don't answer email", even though it was their idiotic email in the first place and they could have just searched the mailing list archive or read the FAQ. Eventually enough unappreciative idiots will make enough demands that you finally snap. You flame an idiot on the mailing list and suddenly it isn't fun any more. You feel obliged to carry on now though, as you've put a lot of effort and time into your code and you feel like you owe it to your users. You still get idiots who make demands but you ignore them. It still isn't fun. Eventually you quit and the idiots have won.
It hasn't happened to me and I don't intend for it to happen to me. The project I work on is large enough and has enough clued users to put the new ones straight, and are very supportive. I can generally stay polite and answer the same questions for the seventh time that week. I don't mind too much because 99% of the users appreciate what the developers are doing and understand if we don't answer mail. I'm lucky though. I know that the above scenario is playing itself out in a lot of projects right now.
I'm actually a fan of ICQ, probally because it's been around the longest, esp the fact that the network offers peer to peer messanging rather then routing it via MSN or Yahoo's servers. The only reasons I don't use it on a daily basis is living in America no one really uses it anymore, they've all moved on to MSN or Yahoo servers. The only people I know personaly who use it on a regular bases are those who corispond to users is places like Hong Kong, Germany, and Belgium.
But needless to say it's a big deal in places like europe. I've knows a few people in Belgum who's phone offers SMS-> icq service long before we in america started seeing phones with SMS -> other chat services. While this is just an uneducated observation, icq seems to have caught out more quickly. I'd suspect it's do to the sillyness of paying moolah for local calls, such an insentave I suspect it's likely for ICQ's popularity.
From what I remember SMS-> AIM and ICQ messaging were the first to be seen on mobiles, so I see this intrgragation as being a big deal. No longer would it be the big 4 messanging standards that need respective software support.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I love auto-logging for these reasons:
1) Ever accidentally close an AIM window before you could read an incoming IM? I hate having to admit to doing that, and then, having to request a repeat of that comment.
2) Sometimes people say hilarious shit. My AIM logs provide hours of entertainment.
3) I rarely use AIM logs to quote people's mistakes, and am not paranoid about others quoting mine. I know my friends are logging me -- and I don't say things that I want off the record via IM.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I had an ICQ UIN account in the six digit range, specifically below 500000. I had that number for several years, and registered various e-mail accounts with it. That was my mistake. It turns out that low ICQ UINs have a black market, where Eastern Europeans, especially Russians, tend to "steal" UINs and then sell them off to the highest bidder through various web sites, such as this one. You can use it for a while, a year, maybe two, and then they'll steal it back from you and re-sell it. This happened to me. I once had my primary e-mail account for my ICQ UIN be a @operamail.com address. Eventually, my @operamail.com e-mail address expired, and I switched over to e-mail with my own domain name. I made sure that this was changed with my UIN as well. However, ICQ has this lovely little feature where they'll e-mail your password to any and all e-mail addresses you have *ever* listed with your account. Thus, even though my UIN was set to use an @apparition.org e-mail address, a Russian managed to create an @operamail.com e-mail address that was the same as the one I used before, and used ICQ's password reminder feature to gain access to my account. I found this out because one day ICQ was no longer recognizing my password, and using the same method that the Russian stealer used, I obtained the changed password, and logged on, only to find a half-dozen new contacts and several messages waiting for me, all in Russian. A few days later, I got a message in Russian that roughly translated as, "How dare you steal my UIN from me. Give it back, now!" Riiight... Soon enough, they used the ICQ password retrieval feature again and re-changed the password. This went back and forth for about a week before I gave up and let the Russians win. I e-mailed ICQ support, and received a useless generated reply, telling me how to go about changing my password. Since then, I've realized that ICQ is as secure as a box of Cheerios, and have moved on to different instant messengers.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde