Uh oh! I Seek You to Pidgin…

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Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh!Uh oh! Uh oh!

Now, don’t go and let your imagination runs wild. That’s not my voice expressing my pleasure behind the closed door. But it’s the sound of ICQ. 😛

ICQ, pronounced as ‘I Seek You’. ICQ used to be very famous 10 years back. It’s the first IM that I used back then in the year 2000. I was introduced to the world of chatrooms back then in 2000 by my daddy, and he helped me installed my first IM ever in my PC, and I remembered how excited I got to be able to chat online with my friends from school.

Actually, he didn’t ‘introduced’ it to me, but I coerced him to install it for me cuz I thought it was fun. Hey… he can playfully flirt with ladies online behind my mummy’s back, why can’t I do the same with the boys in school using some fancy and cute nicknames?  Well, to cut the long story short, daddy dearest finally relented and sulkily installed ICQ for me in my PC so that I’d shut my mouth in front of my mum.

I remember ICQ. It was an in thing back then before MSN Messenger , Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MIRC and etcetera started to take over and dominate the world of Instant Messenger.

ICQ is a popular instant messaging computer program, which was first developed by  an Israeli company known as Mirabilis which is now taken over by AOL.

The first version of the program was released in November 1996 if my memories serves me right, and ICQ became one of the first Internet-wide instant messaging services.

I used to chat on ICQ with my friends from school and people from the net, but as time goes by ICQ somewhat faded into the background, and people started to use other IM like MSN Messenger and whatnot to communicate with each other real time on the net.

ICQ was the very first IM that I used. Then MSN messenger started to make it’s grand entrance and I got attracted to it’s cute emoticon and interface. When I started to use MSN Messenger, I found that it is more convenient and user friendly, and much more quiet… there was no sexy ‘Uh oh’ sound when someone sends me a message and therefore, I got stuck to using it for a couple of years until other messengers came along.

As time goes by I no longer use MSN Messenger full time. Partly because my friends were scattered everywhere on the net, using different kind of IM. Some of them are using other messengers, and I found it’s quite confusing to login into various type of IMs.

I don’t quite like to login into various messenger simultaneously and let them run just to wait for messages from my online friends, cuz for what it’s worth, those messengers really consume RAM, and my PC memories were never enough.

I like speed when I’m using my PC, so when I login into too many messengers at once and the PC lag, I kinda got fed up with it, and stopped chatting on most messengers including MSN messenger for a couple of years, until I discovered that there are universal chat platform that allows us to login in all of IM account at once.

One of the famous multi-platform IM client is Pidgin. Like other chat client, it is free. If you are interested, you can check it out. Just click the Pidgin to find out more about it.

Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions.  It allows the users to connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Pidgin supports multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as many Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, as well as Mac OS X.

Great, convenient IM, and Pidgin supported the chat networks below:

* AIM

* Bonjour

* Gadu-Gadu

* Google Talk

* Groupwise

* ICQ

* IRC

* MSN

* MXit

* MySpaceIM

* QQ

* SILC

* SIMPLE

* Sametime

* XMPP

* Yahoo!

* Zephyr

Pidgin is a great solution to those who have various kind of IM accounts and wanted to chat on all of these IMs without needing to login into all of those accounts at once. With Pidgin, I never had to worry about sending the wrong message to unintended recipient, as turning on too much IM surely can make me feel blur at times.

It is amazing how the Internet and IM had evolved. There used to be only one famous IM…which was ICQ. ICQ have a sentimental value to me, and I even wrote a novel loosely themed around ICQ back in 2001.

Now there’s not only ICQ serving us as an IM, but loads of IM that I couldn’t even remember the names, and things get too overwhelmed for me til I had to resort to using a multi-platform chat client in order to get all my contacts and conversation organized.

It is a wonder… how complicated Internet and things that’s related to it can be, but at the end of the day, all we want is convenience and simplicity. At least, I know I want convenience and and simplicity, that is why when it comes to IM, I choose to use Pidgin instead of login into various messengers all at once. See…. below is the screenshot of Pidgin on my desktop.

Pidgin not only spare me the confusions and headache, but it spare my system from being overloaded as well.

ICQ was the first IM that I used. My knowledge in chatting online started from there. I don’t use it anymore because people started to use other IM and I had no one to talk to on ICQ, and so, I began to use other IMs.

Currently, I’m using Pidgin. What about you? What was the first IM that you used to chat with your friends back then, and what is the current IM that you’re using now? Care to share with me?

Cleffairy: Back to basic, ladies and gentlemen.

ps: You’d notice that as of late, my entries are becoming abit techie…well…I’m in the mood for techie stuff these days, so bear with me, cuz I kinda got bored of just ranting my ass out.

28 comments

  1. Sean says:

    I used to use Pidgin when it was called gaim, and used ICQ before that too – but only briefly. I never really used IM very much at all – always seems to me like you talk about 3 minutes worth of topics, but use one hour to do it!

    I think I started out talking with Uni friends who had gone back to their home countries during breaks via Unix talk:

    https://www.utexas.edu/cc/faqs/unix/Talk-using.html

    I just installed it on a couple of PCs here, and it really took me back in time! If you’re using Ubuntu, you can try it out with

    sudo apt-get install talk talkd

    Seems like it may not get a lot of use any more, the package install doesn’t finish the job on my PCs, inetd seems to fail to start the first time, so I needed

    sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd start

    so that the talk daemon would start. Other than having to use it in a terminal, the biggest difference you might note between modern IM services and ‘talk’ is that you can see what the other person is typing *as they type it*, so think before you type – the backspace key won’t save you!

    Reply
  2. Alv0808 says:

    Tried it in year 2000 beside the MIRC..hehhe.. yup sometimes can flirt with other guys.. my ex found me at ICQ coz I’m too damned using my own nickname hahahaa…

    Reply
  3. Caroline says:

    hey same here, ICQ the 1st IM! 🙂 btw i heard those kind of like pidgin thingy bring spams and viruses too. am not sure but its look like those meebo thingy and its actually slowly bringing virus to ur pc.:)

    Reply
    • Cleffairy says:

      LOL… security wise, Caroline, I won’t have to worry about Virus at all, cuz I’m not using Windows. 😀 I’m using Ubuntu Linux. 😀 It’s a different platform from Windows… so I’m kinda protected from virus, trojans and spyware. *sigh* I assume you’re using Windows, since you are worried about spams and Virus. 😛 People who use MacOS, Linux or other platforms usually won’t have to worry about virus.

      Meeboo? I nver use Meeboo before, got to check it out one day.

      Reply
  5. choonhong says:

    Yeah, a bunch of IM nowadays really troublesome and headache. i recall that’s a freeware allowed me to login to few popular IMs, but after i lost my laptop, i couldnt find back the software.

    Reply
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  9. fatty oldman says:

    i stil rmbr i used icq about 30yrs ago wen im stil in thirties yrs old but nw using msn mostly but can webcam coz it cant suppot…they told me bought xternal web cam which i did but cant used oso… 🙁

    Reply
  12. ericlee says:

    ICQ ROCKS!!!!! well at least last time…I changed to MSN before people start using it because I got frustrated over ICQ…I can’t remember why…I think it was because I kept getting DC. I then forced my friends to switch to MSN if they wanna talk to me about anything..LOL eventually after about 8 months using MSN, ppl start to switch to that and I am very glad that time I started using it first…Still using it but kinda frustrated about it because it kept getting heavier and heavier…I have many programs of that sort such as YM, Skype, Mirc and Gtalk. But I don’t have much ppl using them so MSN is still the one…I use skype too because it is easier to call…But the IM that i love the most is definitely IMVU…yes it is heavy but the avatar and the interactiveness of the program is just so cool!!! but i didn’t use it anymore…LOL XD

    Reply
    • Cleffairy says:

      I stopped using ICQ when MSN started to get famous and when my friends started to switch to MSN to chat instead of using ICQ.

      You know, last time I wasn’t savvy enough to disable the bloody ‘Uh oh’… so I couldn’t be discreet when I’m using ICQ to chat, and my mum catch me chatting pretty often. 🙁

      I stopped using MSN… cuz kinda hate the bloated-ness, and makes the PC lag. You know la… using old PC… RAM always not enough, etc etc. I den switch to using Ubuntu… so go for gtalk and stuff… lol… eventually started to centralized my contacts by just using Pidgin to communicate with people who use different IMs. LOL… ok la…lazy ppl, liddat lohh.. ahahaha!

      Reply
  13. CHVoon says:

    i only use MSN… same like you i use ICQ before.

    But ICQ is a bit mafa evertimees i use different computer and need to do some contact install bla bla bla… so i use MSN lo…

    I am not support microsoft but i dont like to use a loooooooot IM

    Reply
  14. Annie Q says:

    yea ICQ, but that time i am a bit “dung dung” don’t know what exactly ICQ is, so not addicted to it.

    Now i am using YM and MSN, you want to add me in or give me your id and let me add you in? hehehehe

    Reply

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