Tupokigwe AS IT: Chat and Instant Messenger

Instant messaging is when users send and receive short messages. Having an IM enables them to create a private chat room with another individual in real time over the Internet. The instant messaging system alerts the user as soon as someone is online as well as if an instant message is being received.

MSN Messenger
MSN began in 1995 as a search engine for music and other sites. MSN's Live messenger began along with hotmail in 2005.

Messenger offers numerous settings such as skinning, which is basically setting a theme which suits the authors personalities. there are numerous themes that are on MSN that the user can use, the only reason why skinning is there is because everyone likes to be individual, and it makes the messenger look a lot interesting as well as letting the other user know what type of person they are just from looking at their background. MSN is well know for its organisation, one of their newest features is that it has tabbed chats, which is basically having the users conversations under one tab, instead of them being separate. Its easier to navigate and find who they want to talk to to as well as making the page look less busy. To add to the personalisation of messenger, it also offers the choice of choosing the text and the colour. again it is all for personal interest in making their messenger look less boring and more of their own personality,and individuality. messenger has a feature that automatically saves all the conversation that have been made. I feel that this is a good feature because if something important was said in the conversation, it makes it easier to remember what was in it, and its another way of storing memories from the conversations. Encase there's more than one user using the computer, there is an option to lock messenger so that no one else can access the users account. This is a very good feature because for security reasons it helps prevent anyone from going into the account, and anyone from accessing their personal details. One of the features which is part of instant messaging is custom sounds, this allows the user to send their own pre- recorded sounds during a conversation, this is mainly for fun purposes and to entertain each other while speaking. MSN also has a feature which allows the user to send quick texts. quick texts is mainly for people who do not like sending the same texts all the time, so instead of typing it, there is an option to customise the the texts and can be sent with a short-cut or a typing command.

Sending nudges to contacts is one way of trying to get their attention. by sending a nudge it simply makes the screen vibrate and makes a buzz sound to alert the user, this is commonly used if the other person is not responding sending a nudge can quickly notify that person. during a conversation MSN has a feature which allows the users to send pictures to each other, just like uploading an image onto a social networking site, only faster. this is a fast way of sharing each others interests, or better still a faster way of sending pictures instead of by email. although email is good, sending the pictures via instant messenger gets the pictures to the other user instantly. since MSN is one of the renowned instant messengers, it is available in numerous ways. Since devices such as the Iphone have come into the market, it has come almost essential that MSN is on their phone, for businesses this would be very useful. It's almost like the Blackberry having its own messenger making it a lot easier to communicate with people and its for free. there are also other devices such as the Ipad, Xbox live etc.

Yahoo Messenger

Yahoo messenger was originally under the name of Yahoo Pager, and was releases on March 1998

Just like MSN, yahoo has its own unique and similar features. Photo sharing is one of the applications which nearly all messengers will have, its very easy to send them. All the user has to do is drag the picture into the conversation text box, or upload them, either way they are both fast ways of sending pictures to each other than email. In addition to that it is also possible to show albums to each other, instead of having to pick one picture at a time, this is a good feature because they pictures are viewable in a time line type of view, making it easy to brows the pictures easier and faster. sometimes the user may not know when they are being sent an instant message, very similar with MSNwebcam. This can be used for video chatting to each other, its almost like talking face to face because the users can see each other, but not quite the same experience. Having a webcam is very good not just for friends and family but for many businesses as well, some business transactions happen via webcam if they are in another town, country, or continent, it makes it a lot easier to discuss an agenda or just save money on travelling.
Parental control is another feature on Yahoo, it is a good application for protecting kids if they wish to have a messenger, is can prevent the kids from any paedophiles that may want to track them.

Advantages of Instant messaging

There are several advantages of inststant messaging. The first one is the most common, and that is you can chat for free to anyone from anywhere in the world as long as they are online at the same time. The good thing about this is that the conversation is instantaneous and that the user can talk for as long as they want without having to pay for anything. During the conversation the users are able to send files and pictures without having to send them via email or by printing out the files and sending them via postcard. The files do not take a long time to upload in the conversation which makes it a lot quicker to send the pictures or files. One of the great features about instant messaging is that as long as you have a webcam on their computer, on their laptop, or a Xbox, instant messaging gives the user an experience of feeling like their talking to their friends face to face. Although it is behind a computer they can still see what the other person is doing, in addition to that there is also an application that allows the user to talk to their friends, if they do not want to type the word, that makes it more like talking to the them in person. In some situations, there are people in the users contact list who they are migt not want to talk to, Messengers give the option to say who they want to block, doing this will automatically stop anyone from trying to chat to the user. Another feature about Messengers is that the users can talk to as many people as they want, and they can add people to the conversation. In some cases when work needs to be done in groups, Messenger gives the user an option to add people to the converstion, an talk altogther as a group.

Disadvantages

There are several disadvantages of instant messaging, since the way we communicate is by typing the user wont't know what kind of tone the other user is trying to put across. This makes the message quite hard to understand and in some cases the user may misinterpret the message wrong. another reason is that viruses can easily be transfered via the instant chat, just like emailing is can also have its own attachments that can cause a virus, especially if a person has made a user name that does nothing but cause viruses, all they have to do is send a request and wait for the user to accept it. just like most messengers it can be very distracting, especially if the users are doing work. The thing with messenger is that the user can have as many contacts as they want, therefore they can start more than one conversation with different people, and can be on it for hours which can make them loose track of time, especially since messenger can be on various devices. The problem with instant messenger is that sometimes the user may not know who they are adding, this can be a problem because they can be talking normally to this person, but on the other side the person can be an on-line predator, so all they have to do is gain the users trust and soon take advantage of them. this can be quite bad for teenagers and below because I would assume that they would use instant messaging more than adults would.

News Stories

This story is about how how employees are using instant messaging for their own use, instead of emails. It says that using instant messenger has no restrictions than with what they can do unlike emails which have certain policies attached to them in their workplace.

This news story is about how Twitter is going to take over the use of emailing. A professor has said that instant messaging an social networking sites will wipe out emailing within the next ten years,