Instant Messaging in the year 2005 sucks
this entry brought to you by the white stripes, "broken bricks"
WHY I NO LONGER USE ICQ:
I've made no secret about loving ICQ. It's always been my favorite instant messaging program. It has an easy to organize buddy list. It has a user friendly search-for-buddy function. It was the first to have off-line messaging. It's still the only one that saves message history (and going over years of instant messages with a friend when you're bored is great). But what I loved the most was the way it organized your task bar. Once the ICQ menu was minimalized, you had a single icon in the corner of your screen that made a flashing notepad when you got messaged. If you were talking to 15 people, it didn't clutter your screen with 15 different screens. You clicked on the single icon, and it would give you the first message. And you'd answer, click again, and it would give you the next message, and so on. No cluttered screens. No 20 flashing windows at the bottom of your screen. None of my friends ever got ignored, because once I'd messaged one friend, click! I had a message from the next. And I could answer each message individually, without having to scroll up to see what they'd said that I'd missed, and risk not responding to half of it. Elegent. User friendly.
Then, for some reason, one by one, my friends refused to log onto ICQ. It got to the point where it would be one friend on-line whenever I got on, and someone else permanently in away mode. But the message history was so great! So I kept at it, even though none of my idiot friends used it. Then I reformatted, and had to download it again. And the only option the new one had was chat screen. Chat screens! Like every other fucking instant message system! So I installed an older version which, for some reason, would not save my history. So I finally decided. Fuck it. Never fucking mind. Thanks, ICQ. The two things that made you unique are gone, you let me down. Now I gotta use AIM. Thanks a lot.
WHY I HATE AIM:
I fucking hate AIM. Let's start with the little things.
1) The management of your buddy list is clumsy. Why do I have to go to a seperate "edit buddy list" menu just to delete or add people? Why can't I just click "delete" on the first menu I see? How fucking hard is that? And the newer versions of AIM have a "Recent Buddy" list, which makes a seperate buddy list for people that you didn't put on your actual buddy list. Whenever you talk to someone, they get put on the "Recent Buddy List"... regardless of whether you actually liked talking to them or not. Now, there is an option to turn the Recent Buddy List off, but the default of course, is on. Why even bother with buddy lists at all if every single person I ever talk to is going to automatically get thrown on a SECOND list? And why do I have to click more than one button to get rid of them, as per the first complaint?
2) Why can't I search by city, just so I can see who's on-line in my area? I don't really care anything about meeting new people right now, especially not through the random people on AIM, but there was a time when I'd be on in the middle of the night and curious who else was up and bored in the area, and I can certainly imagine scenarios where other people in the world might want to search by city. But AIM won't let you do it.
3) People can add you to their list without your permission. So if you have a cyber stalker, you have no choice but to come up with a new screen name and start your buddy list all over again.
4) You can't send off-line messages, yet every other major instant message system will. Why is the most popular instant message program from the fucking stone age?
5) Chat screen interfaces. I HATE CHAT SCREEN INTERFACES!!! This is why: If I dare to log on to AIM, I see someone that I want to talk to. So we're chatting. Then someone IMs me that wants to talk to me. Cool. Then a third window pops open from someone new. That's cool; I got nothing but love for them, so I chat with them, too. Here's the problem. At this point, I'm more than likely talking to someone I like more than the others. It's not that I don't like the other two. It's just that, by now, one of them is going to be someone who will get priority. So when I'm IM'ing someone else, priority 1 sends a message, so I bounce to them. Then priority 3 messages, so I go to them. And while I'm there, priority 2 sends a message, immediately followed by priority 1. So I skip two and go to 1 . By now, all windows are flashing and I have no idea who sent what in what order, so I just keep up with priority 1. Then someone else wants to chat. This continues. A half hour passes and someone who is really cool that I care about, but just happens to not be priority 1, is asking, "Where are you? Why are you ignoring me?" And don't even think about surfing the web while talking to more than one person on AIM. You'll click on a window and have paragraphs of stuff to scroll through that you missed, and all this while people are sending you more messages. This is compounded by the fact that people apparently has their enter key set to click automatically every two seconds, because when you read what they type it's usually "Hey *enter* :) *enter* Haven't seen you in a while *enter* :D *enter*" So what could've been sent in one line and would have taken no longer to type is sent in seven. But you know what would solve all this? Not having a fucking chat-screen interface.
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with love from CRS @ 7:27 PM
Thursday, September 22, 2005
WHY I NO LONGER USE ICQ:
I've made no secret about loving ICQ. It's always been my favorite instant messaging program. It has an easy to organize buddy list. It has a user friendly search-for-buddy function. It was the first to have off-line messaging. It's still the only one that saves message history (and going over years of instant messages with a friend when you're bored is great). But what I loved the most was the way it organized your task bar. Once the ICQ menu was minimalized, you had a single icon in the corner of your screen that made a flashing notepad when you got messaged. If you were talking to 15 people, it didn't clutter your screen with 15 different screens. You clicked on the single icon, and it would give you the first message. And you'd answer, click again, and it would give you the next message, and so on. No cluttered screens. No 20 flashing windows at the bottom of your screen. None of my friends ever got ignored, because once I'd messaged one friend, click! I had a message from the next. And I could answer each message individually, without having to scroll up to see what they'd said that I'd missed, and risk not responding to half of it. Elegent. User friendly.
Then, for some reason, one by one, my friends refused to log onto ICQ. It got to the point where it would be one friend on-line whenever I got on, and someone else permanently in away mode. But the message history was so great! So I kept at it, even though none of my idiot friends used it. Then I reformatted, and had to download it again. And the only option the new one had was chat screen. Chat screens! Like every other fucking instant message system! So I installed an older version which, for some reason, would not save my history. So I finally decided. Fuck it. Never fucking mind. Thanks, ICQ. The two things that made you unique are gone, you let me down. Now I gotta use AIM. Thanks a lot.
WHY I HATE AIM:
I fucking hate AIM. Let's start with the little things.
1) The management of your buddy list is clumsy. Why do I have to go to a seperate "edit buddy list" menu just to delete or add people? Why can't I just click "delete" on the first menu I see? How fucking hard is that? And the newer versions of AIM have a "Recent Buddy" list, which makes a seperate buddy list for people that you didn't put on your actual buddy list. Whenever you talk to someone, they get put on the "Recent Buddy List"... regardless of whether you actually liked talking to them or not. Now, there is an option to turn the Recent Buddy List off, but the default of course, is on. Why even bother with buddy lists at all if every single person I ever talk to is going to automatically get thrown on a SECOND list? And why do I have to click more than one button to get rid of them, as per the first complaint?
2) Why can't I search by city, just so I can see who's on-line in my area? I don't really care anything about meeting new people right now, especially not through the random people on AIM, but there was a time when I'd be on in the middle of the night and curious who else was up and bored in the area, and I can certainly imagine scenarios where other people in the world might want to search by city. But AIM won't let you do it.
3) People can add you to their list without your permission. So if you have a cyber stalker, you have no choice but to come up with a new screen name and start your buddy list all over again.
4) You can't send off-line messages, yet every other major instant message system will. Why is the most popular instant message program from the fucking stone age?
5) Chat screen interfaces. I HATE CHAT SCREEN INTERFACES!!! This is why: If I dare to log on to AIM, I see someone that I want to talk to. So we're chatting. Then someone IMs me that wants to talk to me. Cool. Then a third window pops open from someone new. That's cool; I got nothing but love for them, so I chat with them, too. Here's the problem. At this point, I'm more than likely talking to someone I like more than the others. It's not that I don't like the other two. It's just that, by now, one of them is going to be someone who will get priority. So when I'm IM'ing someone else, priority 1 sends a message, so I bounce to them. Then priority 3 messages, so I go to them. And while I'm there, priority 2 sends a message, immediately followed by priority 1. So I skip two and go to 1 . By now, all windows are flashing and I have no idea who sent what in what order, so I just keep up with priority 1. Then someone else wants to chat. This continues. A half hour passes and someone who is really cool that I care about, but just happens to not be priority 1, is asking, "Where are you? Why are you ignoring me?" And don't even think about surfing the web while talking to more than one person on AIM. You'll click on a window and have paragraphs of stuff to scroll through that you missed, and all this while people are sending you more messages. This is compounded by the fact that people apparently has their enter key set to click automatically every two seconds, because when you read what they type it's usually "Hey *enter* :) *enter* Haven't seen you in a while *enter* :D *enter*" So what could've been sent in one line and would have taken no longer to type is sent in seven. But you know what would solve all this? Not having a fucking chat-screen interface.
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