Re: ICQ Replacement?

[sun <as387 yfn ysu edu>]

Ka-shu Wong wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Sep 1998, Shawn Leas wrote:
> > I have one quesion regarding this.  Would it be bad to make it more
> > IRC-Network like, allowing the communion of servers to nullify the need
> > for having the user's home server name at all?
> >
> > This way, you only need their #/nick/etc and *any* of the connected
> > servers.
> 
> Yes i think it would be, since you would rapidly run out of nicks or
> numbers, if it ever gets popular. :)
> Consider email addresses: username@hostname.  These seem to be working
> pretty well, despite the massive increase in the number of people with
> email addresses.
> I suppose some sort of search facility would be useful, so that one can
> find a user without knowing their full username and address, but that
> can come later...
> Anyway, is anyone interested in helping me on this?  Please email me if
> you're interested. (i personally have no idea how i would go about doing
> something like this :)

may i recommend not trying to reinvent sixteen wheels? i would much
rather see a fantastic super-client that can handle icq, aim, and irc as
seamlessly as possible (as all 3 seem to do the same basic jobs equally
well except for irc, which also adds multi-user chats). rather than add
a fourth client to my system to communicate with the half-dozen people i
know who will use this instead of irc, icq, or aim, i'd rather throw
those away and run one instead. that way when people ask "hey, are you
on <service>?" it won't mean hunting through webpages trying to find
_yet another_ instant-messaging client and relearning yet another
poorly-designed interface.

i would recommend looking up "icq" on http://freshmeat.net/ and
contacting one of the authors of the dozen or so clients that turn up.
i'm sure one of them will be glad to have your help, and teaming up will
help the number of quality clients go up while the number of
poorly-designed clients will stay the same or go down.

better yet, i'd love to see icq and aim support built into my favorite
irc clients. after all, most instant messaging protocols do little more
than ircii's or bitchx's "/query," "/dcc" and "/whois" commands. i think
seamless integration would be best built into yagirc or a similarly
well-designed irc client.
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin