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NINA: Rebuilding the original AIM, AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms

lukaslalinsky

What I truly miss is the short era, when it looked like Jabber is going to win the chat world. At least here in Europe, ICQ was on its way out. Both Google and Facebook had interoperable XMPP servers. It ended very shortly after that, but it was good for the year or two while it lasted.

WorldMaker

Since Champions Online, Cryptic Studio's game chat server used to be Jabber compatible, too. I don't know if it still is, I haven't had a Jabber client running in a while. It might still be.

There was something really cool about getting MMO Guild chat (or Fleet chat in my case as a big Star Trek Online player at the time) in your normal IM client.

That was also about when we discovered the server would let you create channels that would be global across all the games (and any IM clients). I still tend to refer to Champions Online and (Cryptic's) NeverWinter Online as "Holodeck Adventures" for that reason, because I'd commonly play those in the days of my very active STO Fleet until people started chatting about STO in the global fleet chat.

tracker1

I was just talking about this the other day... it was nearly a panacea of interconnected, interoperable messengers. My memory shortened it to a few months, but I remember it pretty well. The protocol sucked, but it did work.

I really miss the group chats on Yahoo that included voice. X spaces is close-ish, and I know that discord and others have similar features... just feels a lot less connected.

singpolyma3

Facebook never had an interoperable server. They operated a limited functionality gateway to allow using your own client, but it never worked well and never federated.

tomschwiha

For me it was xfire/icq => msn/skype => teamspeak 2/3 (short mumble) => discord

bobsmith432

These guys are reverse engineering Skype now too. Really cool stuff.

https://nina.chat/news/120500000101270/icq-now-in-open-alpha...

fishgoesblub

Unfortunately, the dev refuses to opensource this and the Escargot rewrite. There's a FOSS AIM server[1], and apparently it supports ICQ, which is new from the last I saw it.

[1] https://github.com/mk6i/retro-aim-server

xcrunner529

Yeah very annoying. They ask for donations constantly but are enjoying keeping everything for themselves.

fishgoesblub

Especially since the original Escargot server software was open source.

benguild

the sad thing about this is what made it magical before was the people that were on there, and it’s impossible to get that back now!

thedanbob

Yup, they can probably rebuild ICQ the way it was when I was 16 but they can't make me 16 again.

bulte-rs

Hmmm… my wife constantly reminds me that I behave like a 16 y/o child. Perhaps ICQ should be reborn!

btucker

Also, it was a time when being “online” was an active state. Now we’re “online” passively 24/7.

sylens

Yes, this is it. "Logging on" and "Logging off" were explicit actions that you took as part of your day, instead of just being perpetually connected and reachable.

5-

what made it magical was us being younger. likewise, it's very likely impossible to get that back.

endre

same with IRC except IRC never went down.

mmmlinux

no but apparently you can have some kind of coup on one of the most popular servers and cause a huge dent in it...

Bluestein

... and never will :)

Spaceships bearing our genes will still beam IRC from somewhere down deep in engineering.-

stevenAthompson

What would be the purpose of launching a decaying lump of monkey meat into space when the AI can explore just as well with a tiny fraction of the mass requirements?

I'd wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)

anthk

Ditto with Usenet albeit there's always cool people there.

ocdtrekkie

The invitation to join the project's Discord is magical. That's... where all your friends are now anyways.

acheron

Ah nostalgia. My text message alert (when my phone is not on silent) is the "incoming IM" sound from AIM.

GuinansEyebrows

at maximum gain, of course, to startle you into a heart attack.

iforgotpassword

Cool project, kudos to the devs, even though (as other comments say) it seems rather pointless. Some things better stay in the past while you enjoy the nostalgia once in a honeymoon.

marcodiego

> We're working to primarily rebuild the original AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms as close to the originals as possible, and document the entire thing.

Why not contribute to one of many FLOSS implementations that were once maintained?

bastardoperator

Unless they bring back personal filing cabinet, AOL will remain dead. I attribute the entire death of AOL to the death of cerver and mp3z

lvturner

Arugably, ICQ is still going....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ

tracker1

Dunno, last I tried it was very different and I couldn't login to my original 5-digit icq number.

giantrobot

ICQ was not QQ. The ICQ service finally shut down last year IIRC. I don't think QQ bought out the ICQ service or anything.

musicale

What is the story for security/encryption to exist in a modern threat landscape? I expect with server-based systems you could have an encrypted tunnel to the server and just connect to a local proxy, or ??

icedchai

I loved the original AIM. I remember using it from roughly 1999 to when it was finally deprecated in 2017. Almost 20 years!

nickdothutton

Create the Internet you want to see.