The messenger disaster

Messengers. It started with IRC, and ends with a permanent video/voice/text/chatroom hydra that is supposed to do everything and nothing. At the same time. Technology is making things nice and often complicated. Finding the right software to fit your needs and hardware is getting more and more difficult. Specially since once-free software becomes spy ware. On my long search for the perfect messenger I learned only one thing. I would have to write it myself.

As I said I tried a lot. For sure not all but many of those that exist since the early 90s. Once you discover the webcam and some Microphone, and now more and more people that know how to deal with them, you end up using a dozen different applications since most of the people you know are not willing to change their client to fit yours.

And it might happen the other way round that you do not want to use yours anymore since it changed into something that you do not want to accept anymore. Yahoo messenger for example. Since some time the other software that is almost forced on your OS when you install it reminds me of spy ware. The windows messenger fails on the normal router since it needs a simply ridiculous long list of ports to work in protected environments. ICQ on the other hand has to be shrinked down to use only a fraction of memory by simply clicking off all the plug ins that are hardly needed. Most follow on similar patterns.... forced updates, endless tabs with useless info or advertisings, huge windows you cannot rezise, all trying to be your email software, contact manager, tax adviser, etc etc etc.

Finally you want to start using one of these multi-protocol clients. One might start with gaim, which has a little crashy attitude and cannot do video. We wait for that and include it then into the list.

Then you use trillian. Be happy if it works, for those where it does not, support is quite a hassle, even if you bought the professional version that is supposed to do video. If you have trouble with your video card for example, all you can do is drop your service request into a forum and hope that in the next version someone will have thought about you...

All of the non-open-source clients have one thing in common. They are not made for chatting. They are made to promote the company that gives it away and to make you buy something from them. And of course to give them information about you so they can send you customized advertising.

On the other hand you have services like Skype that give you the pleasant experience to have a voice-chat with a better quality than phone (I wonder why the others can't, and/or why phone is still so bad), and even dial to fixed lines if you pay. No Video however. Why? I don't know. Its my choice of the day however, and I still have 2-3 others installed to cover video conferences with different other clients.

To have some client that can do text, video and voice with all other clients in a nice quality is still a dream. Without advertising. I will pay for it. I wonder if no-one at the many companies on the market have the same idea. But probably they are just like MS, Yahoo or AOL that don't want you to chat. They just want you to buy whatever they can sell to you. I don't. I do not buy computers at the same shop where I buy cars or hair dryers. So I don't chat with a client that takes 30 percent of my screen to do so. And I do rather pay a certain fee for the software and usage instead of an uncertain fee for spy ware trouble and anoyment about advertisings for stuff I do not want and will never buy.