"I Seek You"
Features
ICQ features include sending text messages, offline support, multi-user chats, free daily-limited SMS sending, resumable file transfers, greeting cards and multiplayer games. Other features included a searchable user directory and POP3 email support.
ICQ users are identified by numbers called UIN, distributed in sequential order. As of ICQ 6, users are also able to log in using the specific E-Mail address they associated with their UIN during the registration process. New users are now given a UIN of well over 400,000,000, and low numbers (six or five digits) have been auctioned on eBay by users who signed up in ICQ's early days. Since 2000, ICQ and AIM users are able to add each other to their contact list without the need of any external clients.
UIN
UIN was coined by Mirabilis, to be used as the name of the so called Universal Internet Number or Unified Identification Number that each user of the ICQ instant messaging software is assigned upon registration. Unlike most other instant messaging programs, in ICQ the only information that is permanent to a registered user is the UIN, although users are able to search for users by their e-mail address, much like MSN, or in fact any other detail that the user made public about himself or herself. The screen name may be changed at will, without having to re-register, as can all other kinds of user information, including e-mail.
As a response to increasing UIN theft of attractive or very short UINs by hackers, ICQ started to store email addresses previously associated to a UIN. UINs that are stolen with phishing or brute force techniques can since then be retaken by their rightful owners using the password retrieval service on ICQ.com, even after the associated primary email address has been changed or replaced by the hacker. This only applies if a valid primary email address has been entered into the user profile since 1999.
Development history
ICQ was developed in 1996 by Mirabilis. The company was founded by four young Israelis: Yair Goldfinger, Arik Vardi, Sefi Vigiser and Amnon Amir. After AOL bought it, it was managed by Ariel Yarnitsky and Avi Shechter.
America Online acquired Mirabilis on June 8, 1998 for $407 million, ($287 million in cash and $120 million over a three-year period based on growth performance levels).
Later versions
ICQ 2000 and ICQ 2001 incorporated Notes and Reminder features. Both are now defunct.
On December 19, 2002, AOL Time Warner announced that ICQ had been issued a United States patent for instant messaging (U.S. Patent 6,449,344 ).
ICQ Pro 2003b was the first ICQ version to use the ICQ protocol version 10. However, ICQ 5 and 5.1 use version 9 of the protocol. ICQ 2002 and 2003a used version 8 of the ICQ protocol. Earlier versions (ICQ 2001b and all ICQ clients before it) used ICQ protocol version 7.
ICQ 4 and later ICQ 5 (released on Monday, February 7, 2005), were upgrades on ICQ Lite — a divergence from the main ICQ program that has a big addition — Xtraz, which now offers games and features appealing to the younger users of the Internet. ICQ Lite was originally an idea to offer the lighter users of instant messaging an alternative client which was a smaller download and less resource-hungry for the (then) relatively slow computers.
While the ICQ client supported modifications of its background picture since ICQ 2003, the release of ICQ 5 introduced skins support. There are few official skins available for the current ICQ 5.1 at ICQ.com; however, a number of users have created these skins using an application called SkinBuilder and have made them available for download.
ICQ 6, released on 17 April 2007, is the next big update of ICQ since ICQ 4. The user interface has been rebuilt from the ground up using AOL's new rendering engine, Boxely (the same rendering engine used in AIM Triton), giving the client a more streamlined look, on par with MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, as well as adding new features such as the ability to send IMs directly from the client's contact list. This version's sound clips were produced/augmented by the Israeli psychedelic trance duo Infected Mushroom. More information about ICQ 6 can be found at the ICQ download page.
Versions
ICQ (ICQ "Classic"):
ICQ 1.111, ICQ 1.113 (1997)
ICQ 98a, ICQ 98b (1998)
ICQ 99a, ICQ 99b (1999)
ICQ 2000a, ICQ 2000b (2000)
ICQ 2001a, ICQ 2001b (2001)
ICQ 2002a, ICQ 2002b (2002)
ICQ 2003a (2003)
ICQ Pro:
ICQ Pro 2003b (2003)
ICQ Lite:
ICQ Lite
ICQ Lite 4 (2004)
ICQ 5 (2005)
ICQ 5.1 (2006)
ICQ 6 (current) (2007)
Other products
ICQ Pro came about since the emergence of ICQ Lite to differentiate between the two available clients. Though the "Pro" brand has yet to be updated, ICQ versions 4, 5 and 5.1 are in effect updates to the veteran 2003 Pro version, which is commonly considered to be "version 3".
Also available is "ICQ2Go" which is an online, minimalistic version of the fully fledged software, written in Flash, or its older version using Java.
ICQ inc. also developed an alpha version of Compad, an experimental instant messaging client similar to ICQ, though it is not available for worldwide use.
Spinoffs of ICQ included a corporate version for the workplace (named ICQ Groupware), and ICQ Surf, which displayed a list of other ICQ users who also happened to be surfing on the same website as the user was. Both programs are no longer available to download.
External links
