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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.
So now I can get spam from two places at once!
Omnis amans amens
so it might as well be me.
Use Trillian , it rocks.
Integration will allow people to choose which service they like better - AIM or ICQ. I don't think they are anywhere near getting rid of ICQ - it has too many users, especially overseas. Integrating with AIM will allow these people to communicate with people who like the less sophisticated AIM communicate with ICQ users. --- Addicted to adult entertainment?
as icq still is the dominant IM around here
-- never underestimate someone who overestimates himself
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.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
Homepage
... and use Gaim, for Linux and Windows. Has capability to connect to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu(?) and IRC networks.
Cheers,
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
They brought ads to ICQ Lite now as well... Which makes this build of ICQ Lite useless. Back to build #1150 which serves no ads amd is a real Lite version of ICQ.
...its improved in many areas, which is good. But after AOL took over it has lost much of its appeal. Now I primaly use AIM, only cause thats what many of my friends(Yes, I have friends) use. Now I can run one program and talk to both, wahoo!
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
We're supposed to feel good about AOL allowing AIM users to message to another AOL proerty (ICQ?)
Gee..that makes me all warm inside.
What happenned to AOL's commitment to open their platform to message to other systems? Like MSN/Yahoo/etc.
As I recall, that commitment was made as a part of the approval for the (now drastically failed) AOLTW merger.
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...
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
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?
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 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)
Thoughts on stocks, markets and trading
The only reason I still use ICQ is because it's one of the few clients that lets you keep messages in the tray and have non-conversation mode messaging. I don't know why anybody would want an instant message popping up and taking the focus from whatever you're doing, or even wasting space on the taskbar. Miranda can do it too but it keeps crashing on me.
Why am I using ICQ right now? Because it has a lot of really important features that AIM lacks. Offline messaging, more in depth profiles, and screenname formatting flexability. Sure its not great for wimps who can't remember their ICQ numbers. Of course both the ICQ and AIM clients suck so much I've used neither since I discovered Trillian, Fire, gAIM, iChat, and Jabber. Now only if they'd adopt some of the features that WASTE has, like ambiquitous encyption(although I'm being told that the latest AIM has some sort of encryption built in).
-sonic
First of all, let me remind people that these are instant messaging programs. However, they've turned into chat programs. I don't want to chat with somebody, so don't keep a resident chat window up. I want to send an instant message. One. Then I want to get an instant message. Not a chat. What ever happened to that paradigm?
Also, ICQ gives you many more status options. True, they're not all necessary. However, you have the option of letting certain people bug you when you have a certain status. So, if you wanted to set yourself as "Occupied", you're pretty much telling people you're around, but don't want to be bothered. Plus, you can allow certain important people to still contact you anyway. And, of course, there's my personal favorite: invisible mode. It's very handy for when you want to jump on to look for a specific person you need to get in touch with, but don't want to be bothered with talking to anybody else.
Oh, another thing... Screen names. It's nice to be able to pick whatever screen name you want, without it needing to be unique. It's sorta like the real world that way. Chances are slim that you'll personally know somebody with the same screen name as you, so why do they need to be completely unique? Again, ICQ has the UIN to solve this problem.
I hope I'm not the only one that feels this way. The only argument I've ever heard for not using ICQ instead of AIM is "nobody uses it." That sounds like a bad reason to me. I hope that they add these features to AIM instead of removing them from ICQ. I'd like to see the two become one. Or maybe I'd just like to see all AIM accounts get converted to ICQ accounts...
Leaving aside all the lesser-used/open-source IM clients, of MSN, AIM, Yahoo and ICQ, ICQ is the best one. MSN doesn't offer offline messages, AIM sucks, Yahoo is not too bad but ICQ is the most useable and reliable imho.
Merging it with AIM will just take it downhill I imagine...
ICQ was, at least as far as I could tell, the first truly widespread IM client, and certainly the first popular client for Windows (yes, I'm ignoring IRC and Unix's "talk"). I originally got it because it had become a requirement for my Mechwarrior 2/Netmech clan (which would put it somewhere back around 96/97). My number was ~1.1 million, so by that point it had already taken off reasonably well.
Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure that early on ICQ had most of the features that AIM has added on in recent years, though I don't happen to have an old copy of it around to compare for sure. Unfortunately, later versions became nothing more than an exercise in "How many new buttons can we add per version?" (see this ICQ history page for an example).
Ultimately, I think the two major items that have hurt ICQ are the feature bloat and the network effect. AIM's ability to communicate with AOL users offered a huge incentive to those who didn't have AOL, and with if the people you know are on AIM, why bother with ICQ? AIM's relative simplicity didn't hurt either.
So, while ICQ may not be quite dead yet, it's certainly lost the role of leader and pioneer that it once had. It's a bit of a shame seeing an old favorite go the way of Prodigy and Compuserve, but I guess that's life on the 'Net.
Mark Erikson
It's a horrible program NOW, but it wasn't back when there was ICQ98. A cute small program that rarely crashed. Then came ICQ 99 and it's exponential bloat. It started really going downhill with the 'everything but the kitchen sink' syndrome - with all sorts of alarms and post-it notes and other crap you don't want in an IM client. After that each version got worse and worse. Thanks AOL =P
Now days I just use Miranda IM on the rare occasion I even use IM anymore. It's actually better than ICQ used to be. Extremely stable, small footprint, and extendable through really cool plugins (including talking to msn messenger clients).
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 =)
Their servers have been able to do this for some time. As a result, Gaim has been able to do this for a long time (a couple releases now, at least).
I would just like to point out that Gaim has supported messaging between ICQ and AIM for a few months now.
Windows AIM has supported receiving messages from ICQ users since maybe March, but Gaim has been the only ICQ client (I know of) that is able to receive messages from AIM people.
IMO, The fact that ICQ uses numbers to identity users is probably part of the reason that people prefer other instant messenger services. Which would you have a better time remebering: 57544362769 or mynickname? When AOL took much of Compuserve's market it was because people loved the way AOL used names for their users and not numbers, as Compuserve did. The first step in making something user friendly is making what they use, easy to remember.
When it comes to the client I really didn't care much for it, especially the one for MacOS X. When so many friends being spread across services I opted to use multi-messenger clients such as Fire on the Mac and Trillian on the PC.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
but the old one. the ad-free, non bloat without webservers, chat windows, spam, etc.
but i guess i'll have to go back in time to 1996 to see that again.
nowadays i see more and more yong ppl using microsoft messenger (yes, that piece of crap). why? comes preinstalled by default on windows xp and it's a pain to get rid of it.
Overworked (voluntarily) + underpaid + no social life + having to deal with insatiable end users = disgrungtled OSS developer
underworked (intentionally) + overpaid + overtly excessive social life + having to deal with like minded stupid people = disgruntled state/federal workers
common denominator = PEOPLE!
get rid of them all! they are a miserable race!
****--- A fortune cookie once told me the meaning of life...so I ate it. ---****
I have A real problem with what AOL has done to my favorite programs. I used ICQ a few years ago, but lost interest when none of my friends used it. (Have you loked at their user database? There must be a hundred million south east aisans!) But even worse has been WinAMP 3.0.
Nullsoft was purchased by AOL long before the latest release. Now WinAMP is not the simple, friendly, llama approved MP3 player it used to be. Now it has a web browser, video abilities, etc etc. I don't want another Microsoft Windows Media Player! Bloated is the word. All that coding for stuff I don't want and the stuff i do want doesn't work because they don't have the time to fully test it. Argh!
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
One thing I have always thought AIM should do is incorporate into itself a system like ICQ has, where you can leave offline messages for friends. I wonder if, with this bridging, that is in the works or not?!?
Regards,
jlk
Here in the Netherlands (a.k.a. Holland) AIM is also virtually unknown, and ICQ used to be the thing. Unfortunately everyone seems to have switched straight to M$N, now, and neither ICQ nor AIM seem to be relevant anymore.
I have an AIM account, but only because I know overseas people who use it.
(I use gaim to log on to AIM, ICQ, M$N, Yahoo, and two IRC networks at the same time - my contacts tend to be all over the place.)
I don't know where the "only six million users" statistic came from, but maybe it was related only to the US. ICQ is still huge all over the world (except the US), and although its user base is indeed declining, all the people I know are switching to MSN Messenger (it now comes with Windows, etc).
:)
Lots of places in Asia and Latin America center almost entirely in ICQ and MSN, and most people don't even know AIM if they don't have any American contacts.
And it's not much of a loss either. I'm not meaning to troll, but if you don't communicate with an American userbase, it's probably the worst IM client out of all the "major 4". Yahoo allows offline messaging like ICQ; MSN is just as easy to use, comes pre-installed now and has user appeal right out of the box; ICQ is still, by far, the most feature-rich IM client. And a lot of these exclusive features are, in fact, useful.
For me, the integration news is good news. If the ICQ features are made available to AIM contacts as well now (invisible/visible lists, offline messaging), I recommend some AIM users give the integrated ICQ a shot. It's a good reason to ditch the AIM client, not the other way around.
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.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
AIM is so much better for what I want it to do. My only problem with it is that I can't be set "Away" and talk to someone on my list at the same time. That would be so useful for keeping the IMs down...
My biggest concern is do these programs allow for inter-client (say Miranda to MSN or ICQ to Miranda) transfer of files? Is there a way to use the video conferencing 'tools' (and I use the word tools loosly) of MSN through any of the clients.
If all you want to do is chat this is all well and good, but I've noticed that if you want to start sharing pictures or video with family between clients and platforms (from mac to win to linux) problms arise.
NMG
I recently found my old icq number and ventured to log back in to maybe talk to some of my old friends from back when ICQ was THE messaging client. Well it turns out back then ICQ didn't store your "buddy list" online so its pretty much a waste of time. ICQ imho is a dieing messaging system. The only people I know who use it are software pirates. Not that I'm saying ICQ attracts software pirates. I don't think the liquor industry attracts organized crime either. Infact......oh nevermind.
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
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!
We moved from AIM to Jabber at work because it can be secured via SSL. Problem is the server goes off the air several times a day. Grrr.
Vonnegut was right: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
I haven't used ICQ since my freshman year of college 5 years ago, but as soon as I saw those 3 letters, my number came right back to me. But I still can't remember my girlfriend's birthday. Kinda creepy.
It has a few problems that I expect will dissapear as it nears 1.0 , but the ability to keep all of your chatts and msgs in a tabbed window is an awsome feature. I also have a spell checker installed to help me with a problem that me and about 95% of slashdot users have. It does all the usual stuff like multi platform communication and everything AOL's aim offers.
The Surgeon General says sigs are bad for me.
You would think these dorks could change a password and email it to the original account creator.
I lost 116117 about a year ago with a bogus multi line foriegn character password and I still have yet to get anything but bullsh!t responses from ICQ.
Need my own Jabber server.....
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
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
Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but my experience (and everyone I know seems to be the same has been that the popularity of the messengers goes like this:
FWIW, I use Proteus a very well-written Mac client that does ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Yahoo Japan, AOL IM, AOL IM(Oscar)-whatever that is, Jabber and Gadu-Gadu.
Yes, it's shareware, and no, it's not GPL'd, but it's still damn good software!
Does anyone have any sort of stats on regional/national usage of different IMs? Since your IM of choice is largely based on how many of your friends use a given network, it's not totally illogical that it might vary from place to place.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am tired of hearing everyone complain about how bloated ICQ is, how they get spammed, etc, so I am providing this simple guide on how to customize ICQ so that it is perfect. First make sure you are in advanced mode and then in Preferences:
;) :)
1)Contact List
a. Options - tuen off everything.
b. Design - only check Sort Contact List by Name
c. Shortcuts - set Activate ICQ Messages to something convenient, I use control-alt-z
d. Colors - who cares
2) Misc - Only check right-click activation
3) Status Mode - uncheck all
4) Connections - personal preference/settings
5) Alerts and Notifications
a. General - choose only Blink all types, save message history, and play sounds
b. Sounds - change the uh-oh ASAP.
6) Shortcut Bar - get rid of everything except Preferences, Security, and View/Change
7) skip down to Email Prefs - clear everything out in this section
8) Old friends - no checks
9) SMS - if you have it
10) URL Messages - Clear that out
11) File Transfer - whatever you like
Security and Privacy:
This section involves a lot of personal preference. But in here you can set it so that you don't get any of those damned Email messages, phone requests, or anything of the sort. Simply go to the Communications tab and check the left column for those things. You can also set it so that items can only come in from users in your contact list.
Under the Spam Control section check those bottom two checkboxes - that kills half of your spam right there.
I hope all of that was helpful to SOMEONE. Peace!
But none of my friends use anything but AIM so I can really only get use out of the AIM protocol. I would like to at least try out some of the others, but that would mean trying to switch over my friends who are not easily persuaded. Mostly all the people I chat with are friends from school. I just graduated High School, so maybe AIM has been our generation more than any other IM? GAIM suits me best though because of its lack of ads without using an AOL client hack, and the simplistic options such as turning off colors in messages.
The world doesn't need more plugins, the world needs fewer protocols. I read the "AOL bridges AIM and ICQ" from the perspective of hoping the AOL was moving towards the use of the Jabber protocol as a common baseline for instant messaging.
Jabber is a nice superset of existing instant messaging and chat functionality, from the programmer's perspective. It is, IMO, technically superior to ICQ, MSN, IRC, and other chat/IM protocols. The main thing that prevents it from dominating is really acceptance/buy-in from the big IM providers: AOL, MSN, ICQ, ...
you can send a message to an offline user and they will get it when they login. You can't do that with AIM. AIM says it has that buddy bounce feature, but you still have to BE there to send a message when they get back. With ICQ you just send te message, leave your computer on, and even if you aren't there, ICQ will send the message to the recipient when they log in. I know my ICQ number. It's in the early 2 million range, I've been using it for a while. MOST of my friends are on AIM, but a sizeable minority are on ICQ.
:) Hopefully they will now take the best of both worlds and make a kickass client once and for all.
AIM is just like any other stupid tech that won out. It won because people who didn't know better used it (because they have AOL). Except in this case there is no winner because AOL owns and operates them both
And this time I hope they clean up ICQ. Who the fuck thought up all those features!? Too many menus, too many stupid options. Emails, pagers, groups, retardedness. They should have just made it clean and simple.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I'm Norwegian, that is northern Europe. I've never met anyone that says they've used AIM. Just about everyone still uses ICQ or MSN and from what I've heard that is also true of most other European countries.
Slashdot have lots of readers from other places than the US, and it seems the editors either forget about that or do not care. The rest of the world does not mimic the US in all regards.
When the editors add comments like "I can't remember the last time I used ICQ, or even what my number was." it is obviously to suggest that nobody uses ICQ. This might be true in the US, but it is probably not true of the rest of the world.
Europeans obviously still stay here despite of this, but it is quite annoying at times. There are other places in the world than the US.
I agree with your first and second reasons, but I don't think having a permanent "file" of every one on one conversation you have with somebody is a good idea. Especially considering how many people use the AOL network. This is the network most people use to talk to friends/family and even co-workers. And don't forget about all the high school shit--a lot of these same people that would use AOL/AIM are from the click happy bunch that install kaaza or anything else that will get them "free" music aka same people who will share their whole HDD. Next thing you know your girlfriend is downloading conversations you are having with her best friend real time on kaaza. :-(
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.
Well like I said I don't know about you but I have somewhat personal conversations on AIM. Chat at your own risk!