Monday, January 02, 2006
Messenger/Chat Clients
Anyone may download and use AIM, and register a screen name of
their choice (if not already taken).
I have AIM, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ running simultaneously.
I find Yahoo email to be the most pleasant to use. I used ICQ 6 years
ago, and it was more prone to hacking then. I went for several years
without using it. I started using it again 6 months ago. I have AVG
antivirus and Pestpatrol and one other antivirus running, and have not
experienced problems related to the messagners. Where I do catch
an occasional trojan is from some website. I once searched on a very
obscure scholarly topic (e.g. not porn or cracks or warez, which are
invested with trojans), and when I visited the site, it tried to load a
trojan on my system.
6 years ago, I could use ICQ search engine to bring up users on line in
a given city, such as Chennai or Mumbai, and message them and
make some new friends who share my interests. The same search
engine is still available in ICQ, but greetings to 100 people will be
lucky to yield one response.
I like yahoo the best for my purposes, because of the chat rooms, and
the buddy list, and good email. Oh, by the way, you can not visit your
email for a year, and it shall still be there. Other hosts will delete you
if you do not visit every month.
I spent one year in IRC, in undernet #philosophy mostly , to have
discourse on topics that interest me. But IRC seemed a wasteland,
with only a few active interesting chat rooms. A retired teacher
named Skept was founder of #philosophy. He and his crew of
moderators ran a tight ship. They were kind of a good ole boy club of
exclusivity, and they would boot or ban at the drop of a hat. They
hated anything religious. Once, I mentioned St. Pauls verse on "Fear
and Trembling" (hey, it is Kierkegaards topic, which IS part of
philosophy and existentialism)... well skept booted my hiney. When I
private message him, he said they have no need for comments such
as mine. Oh well. IRC was excellent for certain programming support
like PHP. But again, the good ole boys could be cliqueish and harsh to
newbies, who had to sometimes humbly beg for an answer to
something which they deemed obvious.
Of course, I am recommending yahoo because of my particular
interests in meeting people for discussions. I know that
online-literature.com/forums uses MSN once a month to have a group
conference on their book of the month club reading club.
All the messengers offer conferencing.
I will say that ICQ seems the most cold and distant. No one ever
seems to contact you out of the blue. I often get cold calls on AOL
and Yahoo, from people who have read a post somewhere and take
an interest. Once or twice, during the past 8 years, an author
contacted me through hotmail and MSN.
I am fascinated by the info on Trillion, which allows access to all messengers through one program. Although, since I already run
You can feel free to try them all, since you can uninstall (hey, that
rhymes).
Except, MSN seems to be pesky about uninstalling, as I remember.
A word to the wise regarding Yahoo. If you ever sign up for anything at
Yahoo, then file a hard copy print out of everything you answered
regarding zip code, date of birth, secret question and secret answer,
since, if 5 years later, you have some reason to contact Yahoo, they
will not even speak to you unless you have that info. This pertains to
email, egroup, geocities websites, and whatever else they offer, such
as blogs.
Eight years ago, I did not have the foresight to save such information,
and I learned the hard way.
All such giant companies as Yahoo, AOL, MSN, are difficult to deal
with and impersonal. I found a website host for example at
minnesotashopper.com and I have been dealing with the same person
, by name, for two years. I searched in google
on : internet provider host "in business for " years
with the notion that whoever was in business the longest would be
more stable, even if higher priced, than some fly by night 3rd world
provider crawling with unsavory sites, for 3 dollars a month. You get
what you pay for.
Obviously, this will not help you with a messenger client, since there
are no small providers of such, but I thought I would make mention of
the advantages of dealing with small reliable organizations that offer
more personalized service, whenever feasible.
their choice (if not already taken).
I have AIM, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ running simultaneously.
I find Yahoo email to be the most pleasant to use. I used ICQ 6 years
ago, and it was more prone to hacking then. I went for several years
without using it. I started using it again 6 months ago. I have AVG
antivirus and Pestpatrol and one other antivirus running, and have not
experienced problems related to the messagners. Where I do catch
an occasional trojan is from some website. I once searched on a very
obscure scholarly topic (e.g. not porn or cracks or warez, which are
invested with trojans), and when I visited the site, it tried to load a
trojan on my system.
6 years ago, I could use ICQ search engine to bring up users on line in
a given city, such as Chennai or Mumbai, and message them and
make some new friends who share my interests. The same search
engine is still available in ICQ, but greetings to 100 people will be
lucky to yield one response.
I like yahoo the best for my purposes, because of the chat rooms, and
the buddy list, and good email. Oh, by the way, you can not visit your
email for a year, and it shall still be there. Other hosts will delete you
if you do not visit every month.
I spent one year in IRC, in undernet #philosophy mostly , to have
discourse on topics that interest me. But IRC seemed a wasteland,
with only a few active interesting chat rooms. A retired teacher
named Skept was founder of #philosophy. He and his crew of
moderators ran a tight ship. They were kind of a good ole boy club of
exclusivity, and they would boot or ban at the drop of a hat. They
hated anything religious. Once, I mentioned St. Pauls verse on "Fear
and Trembling" (hey, it is Kierkegaards topic, which IS part of
philosophy and existentialism)... well skept booted my hiney. When I
private message him, he said they have no need for comments such
as mine. Oh well. IRC was excellent for certain programming support
like PHP. But again, the good ole boys could be cliqueish and harsh to
newbies, who had to sometimes humbly beg for an answer to
something which they deemed obvious.
Of course, I am recommending yahoo because of my particular
interests in meeting people for discussions. I know that
online-literature.com/forums uses MSN once a month to have a group
conference on their book of the month club reading club.
All the messengers offer conferencing.
I will say that ICQ seems the most cold and distant. No one ever
seems to contact you out of the blue. I often get cold calls on AOL
and Yahoo, from people who have read a post somewhere and take
an interest. Once or twice, during the past 8 years, an author
contacted me through hotmail and MSN.
I am fascinated by the info on Trillion, which allows access to all messengers through one program. Although, since I already run
You can feel free to try them all, since you can uninstall (hey, that
rhymes).
Except, MSN seems to be pesky about uninstalling, as I remember.
A word to the wise regarding Yahoo. If you ever sign up for anything at
Yahoo, then file a hard copy print out of everything you answered
regarding zip code, date of birth, secret question and secret answer,
since, if 5 years later, you have some reason to contact Yahoo, they
will not even speak to you unless you have that info. This pertains to
email, egroup, geocities websites, and whatever else they offer, such
as blogs.
Eight years ago, I did not have the foresight to save such information,
and I learned the hard way.
All such giant companies as Yahoo, AOL, MSN, are difficult to deal
with and impersonal. I found a website host for example at
minnesotashopper.com and I have been dealing with the same person
, by name, for two years. I searched in google
on : internet provider host "in business for " years
with the notion that whoever was in business the longest would be
more stable, even if higher priced, than some fly by night 3rd world
provider crawling with unsavory sites, for 3 dollars a month. You get
what you pay for.
Obviously, this will not help you with a messenger client, since there
are no small providers of such, but I thought I would make mention of
the advantages of dealing with small reliable organizations that offer
more personalized service, whenever feasible.
