So we got that once again. Thousands of people got offline, because they do not want to use braindead official ICQ clients, while ICQ does not want to service anything better.
Maybe enough is enough?
There is an internet standard on instant messaging, called jabber.
Most likely, you already have both jabber account and jabber client.
You are unaware that you already have a jabber account? Well, at least you have one if you are registered at either Google Mail or LiveJournal. Yes, both Google Talk and LJTalk are actually implementations of jabber. If you don’t use these services, you may get an account on some jabber server – here is a list. Or you may run your own server.
You are unaware that you already have a jabber client? Well, at least if you are using Miranda, or QIP, or Pidgin, or Kopete – you do. All those do include jabber support. As well as many other instant messaging programs.
Or are you using ICQ because your contacts do? Well… not so long ago I’ve seen a very funny situation. Two technical persons working for different companies had to exchange some technical documents. Both perons have been used to Open Office and preferred to use that excellent package, and it’s standard OpenDocument format. However, both converted the document to Microsoft’s .doc, suffering a lot from formatting breakages, just to make it readable for the other side.
You guess the analogy?
Your contacts still use ICQ (if they really do) for only one reason – because you still use it. Similar to you using ICQ because they do. So just break the chain! For a short period when somebody will talk with you over ICQ, a jabber-to-icq transport will do the job. The above server list mentions some.
You don’t need ICQ. Nobody does. So just stop it. Now. And forever. You will make the world better by that simple step!
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