Alternative headline: AIM still works after 20 years
AIM will shut down after 20 years
261–270 of 345 posts
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#262Pity. I spent many, many hours on AIM in my youth. Cultivated friendships, relationships, and many other one-off contacts. I suppose it has been made obsolete now by Facebook and other social media apps, but those were never truly replacements for AIM in my mind, as most of them have eschewed the venerable screen name in favor of your real name or e-mail address. And for the vast majority of people I talk to online,…
For me the killer feature of AIM was P2P file transfer. Is there even a service today that does this? It was so easy to just click "send a file" and it worked fairly reliably. Dropbox comes close, but, of course, it is not a direct file transfer.
I send files during Skype conversations, so there's that. Sharing a Dropbox link to a file is also possible, but I always considered that clunky
Edit: oops, I didn't know that Skype got rid of P2P, now files are uploaded to their servers
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me the killer feature of AIM was P2P file transfer. Is there even a service today that does this? It was so easy to just click "send a file" and it worked fairly reliably. Dropbox comes close, but, of course, it is not a direct file transfer.
Skype used to do P2P until like 2 years ago, now all files shared are uploaded to their servers.
Hmm I didn't notice there was a server in between the file transfer, looks like I'll have to reconsider how I transfer files
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#264I thought it were merged into ICQ, weren't it?
I was going to comment: this is the final death of ICQ as well.
Nope, ICQ is still going. Wish they'd go back to looking unique but they've gone mobile-UI even for the desktop app. At least the user list is functional and voice and video chats work. You're SOL if you wanna sign up without giving out your phone number, however.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#265I remember having a massive stack of CDROMs in the 90s, it was mostly comprised of AOL cds
Every time I got one of those it'd go straight to the microwave.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
NIST guidelines are for a minimum length of 8 characters and a maximum length of no fewer than 64 characters . What is your basis for suggesting anything less than those guidelines is sufficient? https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/ https://qz.com/981941/the-us-standards-office-wants-to-do-aw...
You should try plotting ease of recall vs the size of password. You will quickly realize there is a long tail beyond 16 characters.
Recalling passwords? That's so yester-year.
EDIT: Well, with the exception of your password manager one, if not using biometrics.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#267I wouldn't be married to my wonderful wife of 11 years, if it were not for AIM. We met at a college party, and before we parted ways the only thing I thought to ask was for her AIM ID. I'm shy and talking over AIM was much easier for me. Thank you AIM. *edited for more details
My wife and I met on AIM (mostly) too. My friend wanted me to chat up this girl he knew to convince her he was cool and she should date him. It doesn't seem like a great plan in hindsight from his perspective, and it really wasn't in the end. We've been married 9 years.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#268i've used aim almost daily for almost the whole 20 years.
it is one of the first apps i set up when i get a new computer. when i get home for the day, one of the first things i do is to sign on and chat with my buddy list.
aim is a special piece of software to me and i am disappointed to see it go.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#269Pity. I spent many, many hours on AIM in my youth. Cultivated friendships, relationships, and many other one-off contacts. I suppose it has been made obsolete now by Facebook and other social media apps, but those were never truly replacements for AIM in my mind, as most of them have eschewed the venerable screen name in favor of your real name or e-mail address. And for the vast majority of people I talk to online,…
For me the killer feature of AIM was P2P file transfer. Is there even a service today that does this? It was so easy to just click "send a file" and it worked fairly reliably. Dropbox comes close, but, of course, it is not a direct file transfer.
IRC had this what, a decade before AIM even existed? I love reading about the great innovative features of the huge multitude of modern chat apps we have these days, which were present in software from the '90s. The more things change...
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#270I miss dedicated IM services like AIM. They had a certain dynamic that Facebook Messenger (or similar) and SMS lack. On AIM, logging in was an active choice and it signaled that you were up for a conversation. With Facebook Messenger, everyone who has the app is always "online." This means that: a) I get messages from people I don't want to have a conversation with at the moment and it seems rude if I ignore them, be…
What you are lamenting the lack of is the 'presence' indicator, where you can set yourself Available, Away, Busy, or simply Offline. Of the current crop of IM clients, only Skype still has it (I think). Of the older IM clients; Lync had it, so did Lotus Sametime, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and of course AIM. Somewhere along the line the presence feature got dropped, and now we're always 'Available' even whe…
Slack has an 'online indicator' and even AIM-style away messages.