I.M.
by Zef Hemel- Published:November 4th, 2004
- Comments:8 Comments
- Category:General
Yesterday, after many years of no contact, “Matt Mecham”:http://www.mattmecham.com contacted me again. Years and years back, Matt was part of the “YaBB”:http://www.yabbforum.com team. When he left he started Ikonboard, and more recently “Invision Power Board”:http://www.invisionboard.com, currently one of the most successful commercial bulletin boards in the industry (used by companies/people like nVidia, John Kerry and AMD). We talked a bit and when I wanted to add him to my contact list, it acted a bit weird. It said it added him, but he didn’t appear on my list.
Hmm?
I use “Psi”:http://psi.affinix.com as my IM client. Psi is a Jabber client. Jabber is an open XML-based instant messaging protocol. And knowing how much of an XML-beef I am, I had to start using it. One of its cool features is the concept of transports, which allow you to communicate to users using other IM networks like MSN, ICQ, AIM and Yahoo. The problem with this is that you end up with a common denominator. After logging in onto MSN using Microsoft’s MSN 6.1 client and trying to add Matt to my contact list, it said my list was full. Jabber has no concept of a full contact list (apparantly), and thus just didn’t do anything.
But wait a minute. List… full? I didn’t even know there was a limit to the amount of contacts you could have on MSN. But apparantly there is a limit of 150 contacts. 150, that’s still a lot. I don’t have that many friends, do I? After looking at my Jabber list of contacts (which merges the Jabber, ICQ, MSN and AOL ones) I saw I had over 250 people on there. Most of which I haven’t talked to in like three years or so. Yah, I know. I’m not the kind of person that tidies these things, like, all the time.
Looking through the list brought back some memories.
Most contacts on there were from my YaBB days. You know, when I was still popular (nobody wants to talk to me anymore these days), I had one certainty in life: when I’d come home from school (I was 17 at the time) and would launch ICQ I would get to hear “Oh, oh!” (ICQ’s incoming message sound) at least ten times. I’d like to say that it was because of my enormous popularity, but sadly it was a “Hey, can you fix my PC?”-kind of popularity. Everybody wants to be your friend if you can fix their PC. In this case it wasn’t a PC, but just a piece of software they couldn’t get to run on one: YaBB. Not because its installation procedure sucked, but because they didn’t know what an FTP client was. “What I click to do FTP?” Ehm, sure.
When I walked through this list of old “fans”, I honestly started to have doubts. Who the hell were these people? dennis21gay@hotmail.com, the_smoking_bear@hotmail.com, imnevergoingtoreadthis@hotmail.com, saddamsucks2@hotmail.com, holyskillz@hotmail.com, iamandarkangelfromhell@hotmail.com (an dark angel?), ja_flowerpower@hotmail.com? Mmmkay. Del del del del del. (If you were one of these: nothing personal.)
OK, reduced to under 150. So, if you’re still here: congratulations, you’re among my 150 closest contacts.
Just what you were waiting for.
8 Commenti
I gave up on the IM a little while ago. It just takes too much time and people bother you from time to time right on the wrong moments etc…
I know you can put it on things like busy and I know you can block people, but it’s just too much trouble.
E-mail is a lot better for communication.
IM is nice if you are a teenager or you have too much time.
IM is direct.
When I need a quick answer I use Msn.
When I have a quick thought I use Msn.
Email is nice, but it is too slow espacially when stuff gets interesting.
That’s hilarious and, sadly, true. I know what you mean, man.
Awww, I got deleted. Oh wait, I have almost never talked to you on MSN anyway, so who cares! *del*
Oh btw, I have had a bit the same as you with YaBB. When YaBB.nl was still visited a lot most people in my contact list were from YaBB (I even had two groups with YaBB ppl). Now only 3 people are left, and YaBB.nl is as busy as a butcher shop which only sells pork in Israel.
Remember the days when email was FAST? It’s too slow today I guess, but when you first used email it was a revelation. You could send a letter sure, but with email, it would get there like right away!
Yeah, I don’t miss those days.
IM is the way to go for updates and realtime conversations. I even sit in my office and im the person next to me instead of speaking out loud anymore. Easier that way. Keeps the mind in one place.