She told me she talked to a guy who just wanted to talk about WoW and his favourite Linux distro. She gave up when he didn't make a move and decided to look for a real man. Was that you?
My standard reply was "hailing frequencies open."
Needless to say it was the opening line that let multiple women know that I was single. Surprisingly it had a 100% success rate. I was the best nerd.
I always said way back in the early 2000s that once corporations figured out the internet, it and society in general would be very screwed. Their early attempts at trying to make things go viral and create engagement were laughably bad. Then they hired a bunch of psychologists and sociologists, bought up everything, and the rest is history.
The early version of what's now Microsoft's game suite in Windows was one of the coolest things I've seen on the Internet. It was a virtual gaming village where you could go sit at tables and play chess or checkers or cards with people from around the world. It worked 100% fine on 14.4k dialup.
Microsoft bought whatever that was and completely ruined it, just like they ruin everything else they buy.
It had. This thing only has branding in common. A different protocol, a different set of features (no contact directory), and while they had the old database of everything, they deemed a good idea to not preserve it, so old UINs don't exist.
I've heard that exact sound used on some computers (lottery maybe?) in gas stations in the US. I'm not sure why they picked that exact sound, but it's definitely distinct and recognizable.
Mirabilis created ICQ. AOL bought Mirabilis in 1998. Russian investor DST (which soon became Mail.ru and later VK) bought ICQ from AOL in 2010, probably because Russians were among the few nationalities still using it. Russians were over 25% of the hits, and it was the biggest instant messenger in Russia at the time. They also own VKontakte, hence why they're directing people there.
I remember downloading almost the complete catalogue of Sega Dreamcast games through ICQ, along with plenty of rooms where “A/S/L?” was a common greeting.
Those are protocols, so the servers/services that run than can come and go. XMPP, which was at least inspired by ICQ, will probably be around forever, similarly.
OSCAR is a protocol too. And there were ICQ servers to run locally back then too. There also was some "ICQ for business" or similar.
I've also learned yesterday that people responsible for Escargot (MSN server) have another project, NINA, for AIM and ICQ.
So maybe these things will be reborn.
They seem to aim for implementing all of the AOL suite functionality. Maybe after they achieve that we'll see Xtraz and contact directory from ICQ working again. If that happens, I'm going to cry for a few hours. EDIT: or weeks.
I met an interesting Argentinian girl through ICQ. A co-worker ended up getting their inbox filled with large attachments from an overseas office with fast internet. We were still on dial-up. We just had pop3 access, no online front end. I stayed in the office over night to download the files so the connection wouldn't be interrupted by someone else accessing the line. To pass the time, I downloaded ICQ and started chatting with the Argentinian girl. She introduced me to this song.
Icq was bought a while ago and the buyer nuked the original user database. Not long ago I found my login info saved on an old zip drive and tried it. Was hoping my old buddies might still be there, hahahah.
Nope, icq as most remember it was toast maybe a decade ago.
Ooh, you beat mine: 848330 (unfortunately, mine was hacked over 5 years ago, and by the time I realized, their logs didn't go back far enough for me to validate that I was the original owner)
For some reason, I never used the "save login info" feature as a teen, I didn't trust that it was safe, so I typed it every time. Hundreds, if not thousands of times over the years. So even after 15 years or so of not using it, I still remember.
For some reason short strings of digits have always stuck really well in my memory. I still remember my high school locker combos and every phone number I've ever had.
I got into my account the other day, it had a shit password from when I was a kid and no way for me to change it. Their web portal was barely functional.
Haven't used it in many years. But I remember having a lot of fun with it in the 90s. A friend from the UK told me about it, and we used it to stay in touch.
It was interesting how random people came to talk to you and were really trying to get to know you. I don't think that would work in modern day internet.
I knew they were around because at times I randomly remembered my ICQ number and I tried logging in, but they won't let you if you forgot your password.
icq died a long time ago, with its soul, the xtras, ripped out it remained an empty husk, a zombie walking under its new master, a russion company desperatly trying to have their own whats app clone
42442595 I was still logging in until it stopped working with Adium. It'd been a long time since I'd seen any of my contacts login at that point though. Just downloaded the official app and yeah. still a ghost town lol.
This is mildly upsetting because I remember ICQ is where I first met a seer who I was referred to by someone else. This was back when I was looking for help regarding a number of strange dreams and spirit visitations I was dealing with.