January 14, 2008 at 10:33Forward to the future! Switching from ICQ to Jabber
* Preamble *
In connection with the global trend of the transition of smart people to Jabber, and the inert resistance to this transition by people who are accustomed to ICQ, it was decided to write a high-quality reasoned article about why all the same it is worth changing the means of communication.
So, the article:
For many of us, ICQ is a synonym for the words “communication on the Internet”, we use it for business and entertainment, find new friends with it and keep in touch with old ones. Over the years of using this program, hundreds of contacts in the list and a long history of correspondence have accumulated. In general, everything seems to be satisfied, and the idea of switching to something new immediately comes up with a logical question: “Why? It’s not bad for me. ”
So, Jabber is not just another ICQ client. This is the next generation online communication system.
She replaced the outdated messengers, whose place has long been on the Internet dump. 1. A wide selection of features. Opportunities tend to infinity Jabber, in addition to standard functions such as sending messages and files, changing statuses, it offers additional options, such as:
Due to its structure, the XML data transfer format used in Jabber is acceptable for transferring anything. And the openness of the standard allows you to protect users from the transmission of unwanted data.
2. Freedom of choice
If there is one service for registration in ICQ, plus several regional distributors, then the choice of services for registering in the Jabber network is not only rich, it is almost limitless! Starting from the personal server of your neighbor-admin and ending with the official jabber.org . In addition, services such as LiveJournal and Gmail provide Jabber accounts automatically when registering for them.
At the same time, all servers are interconnected, that is, registering on one of them, you can easily communicate with users on other servers.
There are a great many client programs for Jabber, among them universal ones - QIP Infium , specialized Miranda - Psi , Pandion and others .
3. Secure
Jabber supports data protection and encryption tools such as SSL / TSL , PGP / GPG , SecureIM , OTR .
ICQ can not boast of any of them without the help of third-party programs.
In addition, Jabber is an IM system with decentralized servers. That is, if one of them fails, it will not cause the fall of the entire network in general. And its support by such serious services as Google and others testifies to the right choice.
4. Absolutely free and open
Many believe that ICQ is free. In fact, this is not entirely true, for using the AOL service it forces us to watch advertising and thus benefits. Of course, advertising is shown only by the official ICQ client, third-party programs do not. But they still download it! Otherwise - disconnect.
Total: a simple banner with a size of 463x60 pixels and an average volume of 8.3 KB is downloaded from the AOL server every ten minutes ... During the working day, it downloads:
8.3 KB * 8 hours * 6 times / hour ~ = 400 KB / day
For a month: 400 * 25 = 10 MB of pure advertising, the money for which goes directly into AOL’s pocket.
If advertising is not such a strong argument, then you can go to the ICQ protocol itself.
Over the past years, it has changed dozens of times for no particular reason. As a result of these changes, various glitches began: messages did not reach the addressee or arrived several times, and sometimes they surfaced a few days after departure.
The reasons for these mystical modifications of the protocol are unknown and, in general, uninteresting to ordinary users, but sometimes it seems that their main goal is to fight against ICQ competing programs. Each time when changing the protocol, third-party clients (QIP, Miranda and others) stopped working correctly, the developers had to hastily redo them and release new versions, and users, respectively, download them.
Jabber - Opensource IM system. That is, all source codes for programs and protocol are open and well documented. This allows developers-enthusiasts to write high-quality free programs, and the opensource community - to supplement them, fix bugs and check for vulnerabilities.
Using open source software, you can not worry that someone wants to steal your personal information or harm in another way. All program code is tested and approved by the community.
5. No faceless
ICQ UIN numbers - most often a nine-digit set of numbers that will not say anything about its owner, and it is not always easy to remember.
And if you have a beautiful number? Have something to brag about? It may not be there soon.
Most short or beautiful ICQ numbers are stolen, some several times. Hijacking the ICQ number is not so difficult, there are even whole sites that are engaged in the resale / distribution of beautiful stolen numbers ...
Jabber uses unique identifiers instead of faceless numbersnickname @ server (for example, vpupkin@jabber.org), which are easy to remember, and even better when they match the e-mail address. JabberID is also very difficult to steal, and in general, why?
6. Down with the language barrier
Have you ever had to communicate via ICQ with foreigners, or just with people who are in another country? Most likely, they, knowing your language and having a dictionary at hand, still will not understand what you wrote, because they will receive a set of unreadable characters or question marks. What's the matter? In the coding!
There are a very large number of encodings, each region has its own encoding, often they are incompatible with each other (especially Cyrillic with exclusively Latin encodings).
Jabber has no encoding issues. For communication, one universal utf-8 encoding is used , which contains the characters of almost all languages of the world, as well as a large number of special characters and even Chinese characters.
7. The international standard
Jabber as a corporate communication standard has chosen a large number of corporations. Google, LiveJournal and other Internet services offer their communication systems based on Jabber and fully compatible with it.
8. Communication without restrictions.
Probably more than once in ICQ I had to see: "The message is too long and cannot be delivered." Jabber has no restrictions on the length of messages, their size and frequency of distribution.
9. You can forget about spam
The structure of Jabber networks by itself almost completely eliminates the possibility of spam. No more ads and annoying messages.
10. Anywhere
In one Jabber-account you can log in from multiple computers at the same time, without being afraid to lose important correspondence. Some services (in particular, GoogleTalk ) save the history of correspondence on the server, that is, no matter where, under which client and system you communicated in your Jabber, not a single word will be lost. Also, to use Jabber, it is not necessary to have an installed client on hand.
Enough browser!
11. Without losing old ties
Switching to Jabber does not mean at all that all contacts from other protocols, acquired by overwork, will be lost. Not at all! Jabber implements a system of gates - gateways to all popular IM protocols, such as AIM, ICQ, MSN, SMS (yes, good old mobile SMS) and others. That is, having only one Jabber-account, you can chat with people from other networks, and the old contact list will not go anywhere. Even better, when it is replenished with new Jabbermans :).
Here you can see a list of public icq-gateways, and how to configure them.
12. Enough to be afraid of the new
Most often from the transition to something new we are held back by the fear to leave our homes, the fear of the new. Do not be afraid, this is evolution, and it is quite natural.
Register a Jabber account on any server, even a child can do it.
Client programs - easy to use and easy to configure.
There is also nothing wrong with gates, everything is simple and clear.
So, down with doubt! Forward to the future!
The last point. For those who made a choice
The first step is to choose a client:
For Windows
MacOS x
Linux
There are also cross-platform clients that are independent of the operating system :
A more complete list of clients.
For acquaintance with Jabber, Pandion is probably best suited - free, small (1.2 MB) and pleasant to use. A step-by-step setup wizard will help you to perform actions such as registration, connecting gateways, etc. Even novice users should not have any difficulties.
A lover of breadth of functionality and settings will suit Psi.
After that, you need to select a server for registration.
If you are a happy owner of a Gmail or Livejournal account - you can skip this step =)
The most common servers
List of public Jabber-servers
Registration and connection
Registration on the selected server is carried out using the client program. There is nothing complicated in this, you just need to enter a nickname and password, if you wish, fill in personal information.
Setting up the client - also no difficulties. You
must enter:
Additional links, articles, manuals
Official site of the Jabber
Jabber community on Wikipedia
Jabber vs ICQ - MirandaIM Wiki
List of ICQ transports. Howto on setting this
article and links on Psi setting for working with GATE ICQ
Configuring Psi for GTalk
Setting GoogleTalk
Setting QIP Infium for LiveJournal
Setting ICQ gates at PSI
Authorship and Acknowledgments
Further reading does not necessarily =)
It so happened that on this paper, a whole bunch of worked to the people, so:
Authorship - meako .
Editing and correction of the Ukrainian version - nilb0g .
Translation into Russian - Skakruk .
Correction of the Russian version - sunnyfox .
Special thanks to all the people from whose articles the material was taken. In general, no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten =)
Thanks to the creators of Jabber for Jabber.
Many thanks to everyone who read to the end and made their choice =)
There is also a Ukrainian version of this article
In connection with the global trend of the transition of smart people to Jabber, and the inert resistance to this transition by people who are accustomed to ICQ, it was decided to write a high-quality reasoned article about why all the same it is worth changing the means of communication.
So, the article:
For many of us, ICQ is a synonym for the words “communication on the Internet”, we use it for business and entertainment, find new friends with it and keep in touch with old ones. Over the years of using this program, hundreds of contacts in the list and a long history of correspondence have accumulated. In general, everything seems to be satisfied, and the idea of switching to something new immediately comes up with a logical question: “Why? It’s not bad for me. ”
So, Jabber is not just another ICQ client. This is the next generation online communication system.
She replaced the outdated messengers, whose place has long been on the Internet dump. 1. A wide selection of features. Opportunities tend to infinity Jabber, in addition to standard functions such as sending messages and files, changing statuses, it offers additional options, such as:
- conferences (thematic chat rooms for an unlimited number of users)
- voice chat (e.g. GoogleTalk)
- video chat support and more.
Due to its structure, the XML data transfer format used in Jabber is acceptable for transferring anything. And the openness of the standard allows you to protect users from the transmission of unwanted data.
2. Freedom of choice
If there is one service for registration in ICQ, plus several regional distributors, then the choice of services for registering in the Jabber network is not only rich, it is almost limitless! Starting from the personal server of your neighbor-admin and ending with the official jabber.org . In addition, services such as LiveJournal and Gmail provide Jabber accounts automatically when registering for them.
At the same time, all servers are interconnected, that is, registering on one of them, you can easily communicate with users on other servers.
There are a great many client programs for Jabber, among them universal ones - QIP Infium , specialized Miranda - Psi , Pandion and others .
3. Secure
Jabber supports data protection and encryption tools such as SSL / TSL , PGP / GPG , SecureIM , OTR .
ICQ can not boast of any of them without the help of third-party programs.
In addition, Jabber is an IM system with decentralized servers. That is, if one of them fails, it will not cause the fall of the entire network in general. And its support by such serious services as Google and others testifies to the right choice.
4. Absolutely free and open
Many believe that ICQ is free. In fact, this is not entirely true, for using the AOL service it forces us to watch advertising and thus benefits. Of course, advertising is shown only by the official ICQ client, third-party programs do not. But they still download it! Otherwise - disconnect.
Total: a simple banner with a size of 463x60 pixels and an average volume of 8.3 KB is downloaded from the AOL server every ten minutes ... During the working day, it downloads:
8.3 KB * 8 hours * 6 times / hour ~ = 400 KB / day
For a month: 400 * 25 = 10 MB of pure advertising, the money for which goes directly into AOL’s pocket.
If advertising is not such a strong argument, then you can go to the ICQ protocol itself.
Over the past years, it has changed dozens of times for no particular reason. As a result of these changes, various glitches began: messages did not reach the addressee or arrived several times, and sometimes they surfaced a few days after departure.
The reasons for these mystical modifications of the protocol are unknown and, in general, uninteresting to ordinary users, but sometimes it seems that their main goal is to fight against ICQ competing programs. Each time when changing the protocol, third-party clients (QIP, Miranda and others) stopped working correctly, the developers had to hastily redo them and release new versions, and users, respectively, download them.
Jabber - Opensource IM system. That is, all source codes for programs and protocol are open and well documented. This allows developers-enthusiasts to write high-quality free programs, and the opensource community - to supplement them, fix bugs and check for vulnerabilities.
Using open source software, you can not worry that someone wants to steal your personal information or harm in another way. All program code is tested and approved by the community.
5. No faceless
ICQ UIN numbers - most often a nine-digit set of numbers that will not say anything about its owner, and it is not always easy to remember.
And if you have a beautiful number? Have something to brag about? It may not be there soon.
Most short or beautiful ICQ numbers are stolen, some several times. Hijacking the ICQ number is not so difficult, there are even whole sites that are engaged in the resale / distribution of beautiful stolen numbers ...
Jabber uses unique identifiers instead of faceless numbersnickname @ server (for example, vpupkin@jabber.org), which are easy to remember, and even better when they match the e-mail address. JabberID is also very difficult to steal, and in general, why?
6. Down with the language barrier
Have you ever had to communicate via ICQ with foreigners, or just with people who are in another country? Most likely, they, knowing your language and having a dictionary at hand, still will not understand what you wrote, because they will receive a set of unreadable characters or question marks. What's the matter? In the coding!
There are a very large number of encodings, each region has its own encoding, often they are incompatible with each other (especially Cyrillic with exclusively Latin encodings).
Jabber has no encoding issues. For communication, one universal utf-8 encoding is used , which contains the characters of almost all languages of the world, as well as a large number of special characters and even Chinese characters.
7. The international standard
Jabber as a corporate communication standard has chosen a large number of corporations. Google, LiveJournal and other Internet services offer their communication systems based on Jabber and fully compatible with it.
8. Communication without restrictions.
Probably more than once in ICQ I had to see: "The message is too long and cannot be delivered." Jabber has no restrictions on the length of messages, their size and frequency of distribution.
9. You can forget about spam
The structure of Jabber networks by itself almost completely eliminates the possibility of spam. No more ads and annoying messages.
10. Anywhere
In one Jabber-account you can log in from multiple computers at the same time, without being afraid to lose important correspondence. Some services (in particular, GoogleTalk ) save the history of correspondence on the server, that is, no matter where, under which client and system you communicated in your Jabber, not a single word will be lost. Also, to use Jabber, it is not necessary to have an installed client on hand.
Enough browser!
11. Without losing old ties
Switching to Jabber does not mean at all that all contacts from other protocols, acquired by overwork, will be lost. Not at all! Jabber implements a system of gates - gateways to all popular IM protocols, such as AIM, ICQ, MSN, SMS (yes, good old mobile SMS) and others. That is, having only one Jabber-account, you can chat with people from other networks, and the old contact list will not go anywhere. Even better, when it is replenished with new Jabbermans :).
Here you can see a list of public icq-gateways, and how to configure them.
12. Enough to be afraid of the new
Most often from the transition to something new we are held back by the fear to leave our homes, the fear of the new. Do not be afraid, this is evolution, and it is quite natural.
Register a Jabber account on any server, even a child can do it.
Client programs - easy to use and easy to configure.
There is also nothing wrong with gates, everything is simple and clear.
So, down with doubt! Forward to the future!
The last point. For those who made a choice
The first step is to choose a client:
For Windows
MacOS x
Linux
There are also cross-platform clients that are independent of the operating system :
A more complete list of clients.
For acquaintance with Jabber, Pandion is probably best suited - free, small (1.2 MB) and pleasant to use. A step-by-step setup wizard will help you to perform actions such as registration, connecting gateways, etc. Even novice users should not have any difficulties.
A lover of breadth of functionality and settings will suit Psi.
After that, you need to select a server for registration.
If you are a happy owner of a Gmail or Livejournal account - you can skip this step =)
The most common servers
- jabber.org - The official Jabber project server
- jabber.ru - The first Russian server
- jabber.snc.ru - Second Russian server, on Sakhalin
- jabber.kiev.ua - Ukraine. Kiev server
- jabber.org.by - Belorussian server.
List of public Jabber-servers
Registration and connection
Registration on the selected server is carried out using the client program. There is nothing complicated in this, you just need to enter a nickname and password, if you wish, fill in personal information.
Setting up the client - also no difficulties. You
must enter:
- JabberID (username@server.address)
- Password
- Port (optional, depending on the server)
Additional links, articles, manuals
Official site of the Jabber
Jabber community on Wikipedia
Jabber vs ICQ - MirandaIM Wiki
List of ICQ transports. Howto on setting this
article and links on Psi setting for working with GATE ICQ
Configuring Psi for GTalk
Setting GoogleTalk
Setting QIP Infium for LiveJournal
Setting ICQ gates at PSI
Authorship and Acknowledgments
Further reading does not necessarily =)
It so happened that on this paper, a whole bunch of worked to the people, so:
Authorship - meako .
Editing and correction of the Ukrainian version - nilb0g .
Translation into Russian - Skakruk .
Correction of the Russian version - sunnyfox .
Special thanks to all the people from whose articles the material was taken. In general, no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten =)
Thanks to the creators of Jabber for Jabber.
Many thanks to everyone who read to the end and made their choice =)
There is also a Ukrainian version of this article