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Microsoft Axing Messenger On March 15th
An anonymous reader writes with news that Microsoft is killing Messenger in favor of Skype. From the article: "Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013. On that date, all users will be migrated to Skype, which Microsoft acquired back in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. This means Messenger will be shut down in just 66 days. It will only keep working afterwards in mainland China, mainly because Skype is operated there by a local provider called TOM."
Relatedly, an anonymous reader asks: "I am looking to build a Skype replacement for me and some friends and was wondering which languages you would use server side to handle all of the encrypted data streaming? I am thinking to use SIP on a centralized server (as NAT can be a pain to get through). The clients will use end-to-end encryption. Thoughts?"
There are some alternatives already, for variable definitions of working.
IF you have an existing skype account you get 1 shot at merging your 'hotmail/messneger/live' account. If you do not do it right you end up with 2 accounts. You can untangle it but it is a pain and includes emailing skype admins. Even now I am not sure I can undo it...
This is why I tend to go ballistic when someone argues that we should stick with the larger vendor because they provide product stability. I've been told we can't count on the smaller guys to stay in the market and be able to provide support over the long term. Then I look at it and see the the "big guys" kill products right and left depending on their whim and the perceived profitability of a given market. Messenger is a stupid little product but I'm sure there are more than a few people out of that 100M+ base who have some dependence on it and don't want or need to use Skype.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Was this not what Jabber/XMPP was supposed to achieve over a decade ago?
I'd start by looking there. A centralized server is also a single point of failure. Something that tends to be frowned upon by users looking to chat by voice/video/text.
Google Talk and Google Hangout are good obvious alternatives. If you insist on running your own solution, I've had very good experiences with using Elastix. It has everything built in to one package that takes advantage of Asterisk VOIP. I've set it up for multiple companies as their corporate phone system, including some that used it in fairly large call centers. It's also free and has a decent community behind it. They're pretty helpful, and when I was starting out with it I got a lot of good advice on their IRC channel. VOIP, IM, Videoconferencing, and it has good hardware support for all of the telephony devices.
While this is mostly irrelevant for north american users, MSN messenger, later Windows Live Messenger, was a big part of spanish-speaking internet users lives. Oh, the memories of using it to pick up girls ;) back then when you could add anyone and they wouldn't freak out because "they don't know you", like people do in facebook. Late night chats with groups of people, those annnoying emoticons, pink fonts, useless "winks"... it's all in the past now. Oh yes, and girls showing their boobs on cam as well. Friendships, fights, contact blocks...
To be fair, Facebook chat killed Messenger. It's convenient, simple to use and it works well in small screens like netbook machines.
Microsoft screwed up in their last incarnation of messenger. Demanding real names instead of a nickname, moving the legendary hotmail to "outlook", and making that huge resource hog that messenger 2011 was, with integration to "social" bullshit. So heavy that people couldn't even use their machines if messenger was running.
To date there's no match for messenger's "share photos", which let you drag and drop pictures to the chat window and have them automatically resized and compressed to something more decent, and shown "big" in the chat window. With the option, of course, to download full size and keep (I think yahoo messenger has that but it's irrelevant in spanish-speaking land). This isn't an option on facebook and not even drag-and-drop to send a photo works there (MSN was great: Print-Screen, Ctrl-V to instantly send a screen capture).
I did support for small ISPs over the past decade and it was THE biggest problem if messenger didn't work. People didn't mind that their web browsing didn't work as long as messenger worked.
Skype is in no way a replacement for MSN. Skype was designed to make calls, and that's what it insists in doing. Skype chat is horrible. It doesn't seem to actually "close" if you close it (you have to log out, and then it won't automatically log back in in next boot). And no photo share for skype.
I, for one, will be missing "MSN" as people called it here. Most people won't since they have moved to FB chat long ago.
No No No, for the Ides of March you need to STAB messenger to death. We come here to bury Messenger, not to praise it!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Mumble has very good encryption, if the host uses proper keys. Mumble can use the same encryption keys as websites do.
Apparently, even this bit of centuries old wisdom is lost on Microsoft...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I say we bring back IRC. Really wasn't it the best? No "like" button. No hipster wannabes eating up IP spaces and valuable bandwidth and if you happened to fine one just open up a copy of Nuke and deal with them the old fashion way.
Does skype allow you to paste images/screenshots like MSN does?
No sig today...
I'm told that PSYC is much better than XMPP
Yes, but only by the developers of PSYC. Who would have thought.
I tried that protocol a few years ago. Unlike the XMPP transports, their implementation of other protocols (like XMPP) were really really awful. Only the IRC interface was usable, and IRC clients aren't really designed for instant messaging. Clients talking that protocol were non-existing.
I'm very experienced with XMPP. It does have the XML framing issue they mention, but it also has a lot of good parts to it as well. That comparison you linked is also outdated, nowadays there are XMPP extensions for some of the issues they list (One-To-Many Distribution, Network Reliability, Profile Exchange).
Freenode, Undernet, DALnet and EFnet are all still thriving. As of now I'm on at least 6 networks in over 20 channels.
I'd say IRC is still thriving and going strong.
But with people like the OP talking about nuking, I'm glad for IRC. We have the ability to gline kiddies and prevent harassment.
Im pretty sure the IT guys at my wife's school, and likely tons of other businesses, will not install skype on their computer, she hardly got away with getting messenger. Skype has a bad reputation and is seen as something kids use to video chat with their boyfriends and girlfriends, many don't even know it can be used a text messenger application.
Consider Retroshare. It's an encrypted friend to friend network, with chat, filesharing, and a VOIP plugin. It uses the PGP web of trust model, so a little user education is necessary. But it's got a nice clicky gui and works pretty well. The more people who use it, the better it will get, so give it a look.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Agreed. I'm on two private networks for my employer, and two public networks. Total of 27 channels, for various purposes from socialization to design or problem response. Works great.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
skype-open-source
AccountKiller
VB6, Winforms, VBScript, Windows 8.... It's Microsoft once again saying, "Screw your *and* your client's investments in time, money and learning." We just had a 20-something developer with no business sense show a clueless manager with no technical expertise a new technology and we're running with it!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
you have to admire the original skypes creator, 5+ years and still nobody has managed to crack the protocol
This is actually why I vehemently resent Skype's creator. We used to have open protocols that enabled us to do voice over IP, video chat, and video conferencing. Then in came Skype with a proprietary protocol enabling a subset of these features, and they made billions converting the world from open standards to their vendor-lock in.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
you have to admire the original skypes creator, 5+ years and still nobody has managed to crack the protocol
Why? Unbreakable encryption algorithms are widely published.
What takes talent is messing up as badly as something like WEP and still managing to get it past a committee who's supposed to know about stuff like that. I admire the people who managed that, it's industrial strength WTF.
No sig today...
They made billions because their protocol and software worked, almost every time, even for near-zero-skill users who wouldn't know what a port number is. Install software, get chatting. There are open protocols, but things like SIP take a bit of setting up.
aliens came down, anal probed you and made you forget.
(Un)fortunately this time the anal probing is just part of the regular Microsoft customer experience.
Microsoft is re-engineering these supernodes to make it easier for law enforcement to monitor calls by allowing the supernodes to not only make the introduction but to actually route the voice data of the calls as well. In this way, the actual voice data would pass through the monitored servers and the call is no longer secure. It is essentially a man-in-the-middle attack, and it is made all the easier because Microsoft -– who owns Skype and knows the keys used for the service’s encryption -– is helping.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132935-microsoft-tweaking-skype-to-facilitate-wiretapping
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy? I think I'd rather submit to the aliens. The "user experience" would be out of this world!
Of course, that's just me - different strokes for different folks and all.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
they made billions converting the world from open standards to their vendor-lock in
Think about that a little more. Did anyone hold a gun to the world to force them to switch? No. Clearly the open standards failed the world somehow.
In my personal experience, Ekiga (an implementation of the open standards you speak of) simply doesn't work in a NAT environment. I've tried multiple versions with multiple people, and either the phone doesn't ring, or the person doesn't even appear online. Skype worked. I even ended up giving Skype money.
It's much more productive to figure out why millions can be made switching away from open standards than to hate those who solve the world's problems.
dont make me smack you in the face with a large trout!!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Their culture must really be a great fit with Microsoft's.
Skype Guy: "You know, there are already open protocols for doing all of this. But I'm just going to ignore the existing standards, create my own proprietary ones, and try to lock customers in!"
The result? Today the world of VOIP is set back years, a fragmented mess of incompatibility, with the leading vendor having a closed, proprietary solution.
Right out of Microsoft's playbook. It's almost as if Bill Gates himself was one of the Skype founders.
And the same is true with many other communications protocols.
Skype isn't impressive.
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