Me, Now-Friends and IMs

So far, I have used MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, and ICQ (once or twice, long ago). MSN was my first IM. And my most of the contacts had MSN…

When I was with MSN, I was part of a chat room. A room to discuss about almost anything decent. The moderator was from the U.S (how do I know? For skilled users, there were ways to find this out). I forgot his name. Then he made me a moderator. We never allowed racist people there. I had some good time with that chat room. I met lots of good and nice people there. Everyday, new new people, new new things to discuss. Since the other moderator was in the U.S., we met each other only during a cusp period. When he sleeps, I used to be there (not always) and when I sleep, he used to be there…

I was regular with some other chat rooms also, like medical, psychology, spiritual, religion etc. Another one was a room where depressed people used to come. I wasn’t depressed, though I was stressed ….I was there to study people and help…. I tried to help many people there. One thing I remember is, most of the time, at least a couple of visitors were interested in talking about cats….once I got kicked off from that room for cracking some jokes!! And they banned me for 24 hours!!!

That time, I got a couple of friends from those rooms. But alas!, I lost all of them, except Two (may be three, cant say since one guy is still there in my MSN, though we don’t chat).

One was a lady from the U.S. She was very kind and informative. She gave me lots of information about her place. She underwent a surgery and after that I had only a couple of chats with her. She wasn’t rich and she wasn’t able to take enough post-operative care. She told me, if she won’t report she will lose her job. Yes, she was an American born Italian. (Hope she is still alive.). Thus only one left. I thought I lost this person but came back after a long break. Thanks buddy.

(There is one exception. I got one person after a looong search just to ask a doubt about Trekking/hiking shoe and became a buddy, though we don’t chat these days)

Because of these chat rooms, I was/am lucky to have chat with people from Australia, the U.S, Philippines, Russia, Laos, Turkey, China, Korea, Pakistan, Thailand (this I suspect now, after my Thailand visit….English is not that popular there) and Estonia…. This is what I remember now.

When Microsoft stopped free MSN Chat Rooms for India, I shifted to Yahoo!. But I did not spent much time with Yahoo!. I liked MSN rooms compared to Yahoo. I never was regular with any of the Yahoo chat rooms. Same with my IM, there weren’t many contacts in my Yahoo IM. So, I hardly used it.

I don’t remember any ICQ related friends or event, as far as my ICQ IM is concerned. With ICQ, I had a more web based chats, in rooms. I never had any ICQ friend. May be it will come soooooooon, after I install ICQ (hehehe)

Then came the Google Talk. I have only one exclusive Google Talk friend who doesn’t have any other IM.

This year, I became part of a friendship portal and then Yahoo came back again.

So, which is the IM of my choice? MSN, Yahoo! ICQ or Google Talk?

Since most of my present buddies are in Yahoo I habitually use Yahoo these days.

If you are looking for stability, go with GoogleTalk. And it is brilliantly linked to Gmail. It works most of the time. Then comes MSN. But MSN has got some connectivity issues. And at the last position comes Yahoo! (I don’t know much about ICQ, as on this date)

But Yahoo has got so many other things in its basket.

The most beautiful thing about Yahoo! is its emoticons (about 88 of them) and audibles. If you have not tried those, you are missing something . Yahoo! has got such cute emoticons. And now, audibles in many different languages. Let us have a closer look at the Yahoo! IM ….No, I am not paid for writing about Yahoo!.

• Photo Sharing
• Radio
• Games
• IMvironments – theme based background
• You can add your MSN buddies here
• Search
• Calendar
• File transfer
• Stealth mode
• Allows to add plug-ins
• Avatars
• Skins
• Free Chat Rooms
• Sound Effects during PC calls
• Yahoo Mobile
• PC to PC calls
• Phone to PC calls (not free)
• PC to Phone calls (not free)
• Blogs
• Conference
• Webcam

May be many more…….but it is horrible as far as providing a stable and continuous connection. You will get disconnected very frequently (with default settings)

Is that the only thing bad with Yahoo!? Nope

There is a big bug with the Photo Sharing, which can lead to misunderstanding (I have personal experience). The photo sharing allows the other person to save the pic in the window. What if the person who is placing the picture is trying to remove the pic while the other person is trying to save?

It gives a message to the person who has kept the pic, saying that the other person is saving the image…..True.

What if the picture is still in the process of streaming (that is one person has kept a pic in the folder/window and the other person is not able to see it properly as the bits are still in transfer) and the person who kept it on the folder tries to remove it?

It will again give the very same message saying that the other person is saving a bigger version of the image, which is ridiculous.

What about the stealth mode? Is it possible to find a person who is online but in invisible mode? The answer is ‘Yes’ , if one is ready to compromise one’s own security, it is possible…Now the security is so pathetic in this aspect that anybody in this world can find out anybody else’s yahoo online status……

How safe is the cam? Can we see somebody’s cam without their permission? I started thinking in this direction when I noticed somebody trying to connect to my cam......my present knowledge in this regard is not enough to give an explanation to this….

Can we use multiple ids at the same time in the same PC? It is possible

Can we fake the cam? Yes, you can

These crooked things are not provided by Yahoo! But it is high time Yahoo! look into these matters and fix the bugs for once and all. I have sent out a mail to them but did not get any reply so far.