Public IM (Again)
Posted on January 1, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
After basically avoiding it for several months (because of work, etc), I’ve reactivated my public IM account at ScalziOnAIM on, yes, AOL Instant Messenger. This doesn’t mean I’m done with work (oh, my, no) just that I’m feeling slightly more social, in that IM sort of way. In any event, feel free to add me to your buddy lists, and if you see me online, to say hello. Because I don’t sign on to this particular account if I’m not feeling sociable.
If you don’t see me online, don’t say hello. Because, really, that would just be silly.
Yeah, because being silly is the thing that stops me…
Can we say hi here instead, if we don’t IM?
Oh, sure, if you want to be old school about it.
What if we’re outside the wonderful world that is America and AOL? HOW CAN WE TOO ANNY SCALZI!?
What is the world coming to? The Internet is failing us all, in all of our stalker-ish ambitions!
Well, AIM should be available around the world — go to AIM.com and see.
Yes, as soon as I posted, I investigated. Registering now. Because really, who doesn’t want to help Mr. Scalzi procrastinate?
I’m so old school, you would have to carbon date me to really appreciate my vintage value.
So, I’ll say hi here.
The funny thing is that instant messenging programs can actually be an aid to actually DOING the work, as opposed to being simply a procrastination enhancer.
During the last 20,000-word Week’o’Work on my first novel, I was in regular ICQ contact with the excellent author Alma Alexander, whose telepresence not only helped by allowing occasional breaks so I wouldn’t get bogged down, but also by her answers and advice when I was stumped.
Also, much more recently, I enjoyed an ongoing AIM consultation with a legally-minded friend while scripting an Oral Reply for a union member (basically, a legal/contractual defense a union steward will deliver on behalf of an employee threatened with suspension or termination).
So, yeah; it’s good for that as well as for just saying “hello” and for being silly.
Heh, I use IMs all the time for work purposes. It’s how I learned how to code. I’ve also found IRC extremely useful for all the help channels on freenode.
I HATE HATE HATE instant messages. So I won’t be bugging you.
I guess I was never interested in being part of America OnLine when I’m part of the rest of the world online. Plus I think AIM is the big holdout against IM integration: it gets me less bang-for-buck than any chat service.
Oh I use IM at work all the time, but it’s the IM that comes with our mail server, Groupwise so not compatible with any other IM program. But I definitely prefer getting 32 questions via IM than 32 phone calls. Especially when my answers tend to be things like Edit -> Find & Replace -> More -> Select “Whole Words Only”
Mike – adium and pidgin make it so it doesn’t really matter how interconnected (or not) they are; you can be on all of them without having 5 different clients open.
Trillian too, which some people like because it’s prettier and comes with zillions of possible skins. The main downside of Trillian is that its IRC functionality isn’t as good as Pidgin’s. (Namely, no “ignore” unless you pay them money.) But if you don’t use IRC, then no problem.
@13: I still have to create an additional account to use with AIM, and I still don’t want to sign up to “America” Online when I’m not in, of or welcomed by America.