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Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

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Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#51
post #50
post #36

Say what you will about ICQ, but I can still log in with my number and password from the late 90s and see the names of the people I chatted with in high school in my contacts list. This is nothing short of somewhat amazing in the world of software startups and shutterings, etc. FWIW, I've also realized that my Yahoo account from circa 1996 works just as well. my.yahoo.com even remembers what news topics, stocks, weat…

This. I miss ICQ. Well, I still use it occasionally, since it's part of my MirandaIM setup. But I miss it whenever I use Skype for IMs. For starters, I can aggregate ICQ, Jabber and a bunch of other services inside one lightweight open-source client. Also, it had an entirely different social vibe, which is missing from Skype. It was okay to chat with near-strangers in ICQ. It was okay to add people from some random f…

YES. I haven't chatted with a stranger in AGES, but a handful of my closest friends online to this day I met by IMing random people on ICQ / AIM.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#52
post #15

Is this a leak or a release? Anyway, it seems like 5-10 years too late. I remember when I was in school (till 2003) that ICQ was huge. People knew their ICQ numbers by heart, and it was as important as e.g. WhatsApp or Facebook is today. It even anticipated microblogging - you could set a custom "status message", and people would check each others messages to see what others were doing. They had a lot of features tha…

I can still remember the "uh-oh" sound. I remember searching for and download sound boards to replace the sounds. They also had that chat window where you could actually the user typing. Nostalgia eh.

Nowadays I hear that exact sound… at McDonald's. In Russia, they use this sound at their kitchens to signal that something's ready. Or something. You can hear it when you're ordering.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#53
post #51
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I miss ICQ. Well, I still use it occasionally, since it's part of my MirandaIM setup. But I miss it whenever I use Skype for IMs. For starters, I can aggregate ICQ, Jabber and a bunch of other services inside one lightweight open-source client. Also, it had an entirely different social vibe, which is missing from Skype. It was okay to chat with near-strangers in ICQ. It was okay to add people from some random f…

YES. I haven't chatted with a stranger in AGES, but a handful of my closest friends online to this day I met by IMing random people on ICQ / AIM.

[deleted]

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wonder how they dropped the ball. In my country, ICQ died when Microsoft started shipping MSN Messenger with Windows and worked hard to make people aware of it. (Microsoft even did a silly marketing campaign for MSN that involved a guy dressed as a butterfly). People used the Messenger that was already installed in their OS, and ICQ was history. I believe the same thing happened in most other countries, be…

I seem to have a different experience. Everyone migrated to Yahoo or AIM with MSN a distant third. In my social circle, yahoo was the king of chat for a very long time.

We moved to Skype because of the end-to-end encryption, the group chats feature, the ability to talk and the network effect from others using it and us not wanting to use two clients at once. Oh, and with Skype file transfers would just work, while no ICQ client would ever let me initiate a file transfer to another person, or if it did, it would go though servers on the other end of the world.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wonder how they dropped the ball. In my country, ICQ died when Microsoft started shipping MSN Messenger with Windows and worked hard to make people aware of it. (Microsoft even did a silly marketing campaign for MSN that involved a guy dressed as a butterfly). People used the Messenger that was already installed in their OS, and ICQ was history. I believe the same thing happened in most other countries, be…

I seem to have a different experience. Everyone migrated to Yahoo or AIM with MSN a distant third. In my social circle, yahoo was the king of chat for a very long time.

Parent might be in Europe and you in the US. Back in those days that's how the IM market shares were roughly distributed among my peers.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#56
post #36

Say what you will about ICQ, but I can still log in with my number and password from the late 90s and see the names of the people I chatted with in high school in my contacts list. This is nothing short of somewhat amazing in the world of software startups and shutterings, etc. FWIW, I've also realized that my Yahoo account from circa 1996 works just as well. my.yahoo.com even remembers what news topics, stocks, weat…

The good ole days of ICQ. I felt honored to hold a low six-digit user id which I still remember. On the other hand, I still haven't memorized my wife's phone number.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#57
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fell asleep with ICQ running and my speakers turned way up once. 3 AM and someone decided to send me a message. That was like 15 years ago, I still freeze up a little when I hear it.

I had something similar just after I moved out of home for the first time. ICQ running, speakers still on from the music I'd been playing before, late at night. Someone logged on. Huge loud KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK sound. Just about gave myself a coronary!

In my late-90s undergrad dorm, this happened all the time. Somebody down the hall would have the system cranked, hooked up to the computer. 3am, he gets an ICQ message. A thundrous UH-OH wakes half the hall.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#58
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not 100% certain about this, but I always felt like they stole that sound from the game Worms.

I believe it was from Chip's Challenge.

The Worms sound is slightly lower and has a slightly longer "oh", imo.[0][1] I don't remember there being an "uh oh" sound in Chip's Challenge (the death sound was "bummer" iirc)[2]

0: https://youtu.be/6iCPIUGnHQ8

1: https://youtu.be/eQwJaDyzet8?t=2m54s (apologies for the video track, couldn't find anything better)

2: https://youtu.be/N32ZTPtD9AM

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#59

Is this a leak or a release? Anyway, it seems like 5-10 years too late. I remember when I was in school (till 2003) that ICQ was huge. People knew their ICQ numbers by heart, and it was as important as e.g. WhatsApp or Facebook is today. It even anticipated microblogging - you could set a custom "status message", and people would check each others messages to see what others were doing. They had a lot of features tha…

> I really wonder how they dropped the ball. In my country, ICQ died when Microsoft started shipping MSN Messenger with Windows and worked hard to make people aware of it. (Microsoft even did a silly marketing campaign for MSN that involved a guy dressed as a butterfly). People used the Messenger that was already installed in their OS, and ICQ was history. I believe the same thing happened in most other countries, be…

Well, ICQ was very popular up to 2005-2010. MSN was never a popular choice (in fact it was not popular at all).

So people usually used ICQ, Skype and Jabber. Gmail+GTalk done the job killing ICQ for most here.

Re: Sources of ICQ desktop client by mail.ru

#60
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember ICQ was always fairly nerdy and once everyone's non-nerd friends started showing up on AIM they had to make the switch. One thing I miss from ICQ was the ability to have messages stored on the server and delivered next time your friend logged in. None of the popular messaging apps today do that. I also remember that ICQ made a huge mess of their webpage back in the dawn of the dotcom era.

> One thing I miss from ICQ was the ability to have messages stored on the server and delivered next time your friend logged in. None of the popular messaging apps today do that. You mean aside Skype, Facebook messenger, Slack and Whatsapp? And those are just the 4 services I currently (and reluctantly) use. So there's going to be others I've not mentioned.

Has Skype really learned that in the last year or so?

As it sure was not the case before that (you could even check, if someone briefly was online, while you were absent from your machine, running skype, via seeing the "waiting" icons near messages disappear).

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