andthennothing.net

So ICQ5 is out. I’m still a little bummed out that Jabber, or any other open standard (are there any?), has taken off more. But the reality is that most of my friends use ICQ…

The UI seems a lot more faster. Before I heard the “uh oh” sound, waited a few (1-2) seconds and got the message window. Now it seems more instant :-). And now it’s possible to customize it to send messages using just Enter, and use Ctrl+Enter to enter row-break. For a long time I preferred Ctrl+Enter to send messages, but all the other IM clients I use (MSN Messenger, Skype, Sametime), use Enter to send messages.

ICQ5 is also featuring Push2Talk, which is all the rage now in the mobile world. A kind of walkie-talkie like functionality where you first have to page the other user to be able to talk to him/her, and then you just talk while you’re pushing a button, and the other user gets the voice message. I have only tried to send voice messages, not recieved any yet, but it seemed to work fine, even behind a firewall. I’m not sure yet which benefits there are, if any, using Push2Talk over “skyping”. On mobiles the advantage is much less bandwidth usage, but on normal computers with decent internet connection? I guess there is a difference, because when push2talking you probably use it in the same way as when you’re IM’ing, whereas skyping requires more active conversation without interuptions.