By: Clinton Godlesky
Instant Messengers Through
My Eyes
By: Clinton Godlesky
I've been through a lot of IM's (Instant Messengers) in my computing carrer and I've had my praises and complaints for each. An instant messenger is like e-mail on steriods, creating instant communication through text. The ones I use most are ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger. I use ICQ and AOL IM the most because they don't take up space on my taskbar. They sit in the system tray at the bottom right and don't bother anything while Yahoo!'s Messenger takes up lots of space on the taskbar. Over the years these IM's have been designed better, faster, and loaded with lots of extra features and technologies. In this article I will outline the bare facts of my favorite 3 IM's and will help you better usderstand the Instant Messenger World.
Yahoo! Instant Messenger
The first one I ever used was Y! Messenger, or back then Yahoo! Pager as it was called. I marveled at the new technology, you could chat with friends from a program. This eliminated the need for chat rooms. I used that program for about 5 months. Yahoo! Constantly sent me updates with new features and other things. Yahoo! had a really nice site and they continually kept coming out with new things. They have clubs, games, chat, message boards, e-mail, a breifcase, finance, sports, and lots more. You could access alot of this information through your Yahoo! Pager. Later on they gradualy changed the name to Yahoo! Messenger to give it more of an instant messenger appeal than a pager.
Some of the coolest
features of Yahoo! Messenger didn't come till lately. First they
added more information modules, little sub windows which you
could access through tabs. They added Sports Scores, Stock Quotes,
And even Weather and Travel Information. It also checked your
Yahoo! e-mail for you. Then came the new big update, confrence
rooms inside the program. You could invite all your friends to a
room and chat instead of having to open a chat room in your
browser. The two biggest updates as of late have been Yahoo!
Messengers Voice Chat and File Transfer.
Yahoo! Messenger's File transfer was not really all that much of a major update. ICQ and AOL had this feature for a long time. And even if you didn't have these you could always send a file through your e-mail. But Yahoo! Messengers's Voice Chat was the biggest update. People always whine about long distance rates and so on, well with the new voice chat, talking to your friend in California from Maine or even Europe was no problem at all. Of course the overall quality lacked, it was still very very cool. You have to press and hold down a button to talk to the person, and this can become frusterating. But that's the price you pay for luxery.
ICQ
ICQ is the second of the 3 big IM's. It features an almost invisible interface compared to AOL Instant Messenger. It sits in the task bar as an icon that looks like a little flower until it's needed for use. If someone sends you a message a quick "ut-oh" sound is made and a message icon blinks in place of the flower. You can either answer it or leave it blink for as long as you please. You can heavly tweak the sound options too and get rid of that annoying "ut-oh". If your really good at it, you can have the effect of recieving a message sound like "Message from, Chris" and then the icon would blink.
ICQ
has many features. It has everything from Reminders, To Do's,
Notes, it can even handle your e-mail. It is a very good
assistant among the IM's and being that it's easy to hide, it
makes itself useful only when it's needed. ICQ is the favorite of
millions of people. Instead of user names you get your own
personal ICQ number. They are usually 8 digits in length. Some of
the earlier ones are less than that. As you can see from the
picture my number is 32092359. 
Some of the more popular
numbers such as 40000000 are heavly sought after and are even
offered to be bought for large sums of money. The holder usually
does not sell. This is only the case for a few users.
Your user list is displayed in the main window after clicking on the akmost invisible flower. After doing this your hidden assistant becomes an IM power house. You can click on peoples user names and send them all sorts of requests. Messages, Files, URL's, Voice Messages, Chat Requests, and even Phone Requests. All of these are heard by the other user with tones different from the message's "ut-oh". new sounds fill the air such as "file transfer from:" and a variety of other sounds for the different requests. This is said to be the greatest out of all the IM's but I'm not sure about that. AOL's IM seems to have alot of followers too..
AOL Instant Messenger (SM)
This is the IM that sparked me
to write this article. Is has gone through some hefty
improvements over the years and became popular enough that I even
downloaded it and brought it into my personal use. When not in
use 
it's
just as hidden as ICQ, only sporting a tray icon. But clicking on
it opens your buddy list and a list of anyone brave enough to
show his face online. If someone sends you a message, you get it
right away in the form of a message box that pops up on your
screen that looks like the one pictured here to the left. This IM
is more like Yahoo! with a more instant aproach. As soon as you
get your message you can instantly shoot one right back at them.
With ICQ you go to press respond, tpye it in, and press send.
With AOL you type it in and press ENTER. Each Window also has it's
options right on the IM box. Users can Warn or Block users, Add
them to their list, Voice Chat with them, or read about their
info. I will discuss each of these features in depth in the next
section.
FEATURES OF THE AOL IM Message Window
WARN: AOL's IM has a warning system based on percentage with 100 being the highest and 0 the lowest. People with higher percentages are more limited in what they can do then people with lower percentages. If you do something that merits a warning, then the use can hit the warn button and rise your percentage by as little as 3% and as much as 20% depending on circumstances.
BLOCK: This option when clicked blocks the user from all interaction with you on IM. You also appear to be offline to them after this is clicked.
ADD BUDDY: Add'd that buddy to your buddy list.
TALK: Launches AOL IM's brand new Voice Chat. This new voice chat features Full Duplex interaction so it's like a telephone. Both users can speak at the same time and no holding down buttons. Users with half Duplex sound cards still must as for control of the MIC to speak. Majority of computers made after 1996 have Full Duplex cards in them.
~
AOL's New Voice Chat, the best I ever used.
INFO: Dislays a Box with the users customised info. Users can write whatever they desire in these boxes about them selves complete with links and custom text.
The
version of AOL i was using when I wrote this artice was AOL (SM)
3.5. This version had two new features and I loved them both.
Voice Chat and Direct Connect were the two major upgrades. Voice
Chat is simply the best I've ever used. It has great quality and
I wish all others could do what it does. Direct Connect lets you
send pictures, sounds, and any kind of file directly through the
IM. If a picture is sent, it is displayed where text is usually
displayed. This new AOL is still in beta stage and I don't
reccomend that users who don't know how to use a mouse use this.
It may still contain bugs but as of the date this was written, I
have experienced absolulty no problems with it.
Well I have discussed ICQ, AOL, and Yahoo! Messenger in this article. There are certinaly more forms of IM than this, but these are my favorites. The others include MSN Messenger, Microsoft NetMeeting, and Mirc. MSN Messenger was more of a cheap rip-off of the other IM's, Microsoft NetMeeting is in a league of it's own with Video and Program Sharing Capabilities, Mirc is a simple chat client that relieves you from all the stress of a real chat room. I also have all three of these on my computer, but I only use them when I need them unlike AOL and ICQ which I have running all the time I'm online. As the race for the best IM continues, one will surly be crowned king, just like browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator). For now IM's are a free and easy sourse of communication, lets just hope they stay that way.
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Clinton Godlesky
October 27th,
1999
Proofreader: Honors Student AJ
Favero