Today we had
our monthly ebMUG leadership meeting. Actually it was supposed to be
last week but that was Thanksgiving. This time we went to Pacific Coast
Brewery on 9th and Washington in Oakland. Not a big place, especially
when it's cold because then you can't sit in the outdoor area. They
have wireless internet access though for some reason iChat crashes on
startup.
They serve food though now that I've attended a few leadership meetings
it seems like they only get appetizers. Since I'm usually hungry, this
time I ordered the Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken. Fairly big with
hand grated mozarella cheese and quite good. I also had milk. Usually
the other guys get a couple of pitchers of beer and a couple of
appetizers (buffalo wings are popular, we also had nachos).
We don't get that much done, but then again there is not that much to
do. Priority seems to be on strenghthening the schedule: have more
guests lined up a few months ahead and getting a few major guests.
We're also trying to design a new logo. The current favorite is the Bay
Area coastline with the ebMUG title, together making a face a la how
the current Mac OS happy face is done.
I'm pretty quiet in these gatherings. Don't have much to say and I like
listening to other people talk. Right now I'm not contributing much to
ebMUG other than the meeting web log. There's talk of doing book
reviews and I might try that. Not that I'm any good at it but I'm
willing to try which few people are willing to do.
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I notice that
I get a lot of spam on ICQ. Probably because I don't ignore messages
from unknown users, though I do ignore multi-recipient messages from
unknown users. Still, even if I ignored unknown users, they get around
that by requesting to be added to my contact list, sometimes putting
their spam in the explanation (though strangely, usually not).
Compare that with iChat, which uses AIM as the underlying engine. I
also don't block messages except from users who have spammed me before.
But I rarely get spams in iChat. And there are more and more naive
users on AIM. Strange. Maybe it's harder to automate spam bots using
AIM.
In general I like iChat better, even if you ignore the audio/video
options. Nicer interface (iChat for Mac OS X still has a Mac OS Classic
interface), easier to use, it's just more polished. ICQ has more
security and privacy options but as I said before, spam is not a
problem on iChat so the more primitive security and privacy options are
sufficient.
The biggest problem I have with iChat is that you can't messages to
people who are offline. There is smooth integration with Apple Mail so
you can send an email to offline users. But it's nicer staying within
the application. ICQ has offline messaging so you can use it for very
simple email type communication.
I hope that someday iChat integrates with ICQ so I can send and receive
message from ICQ users. Then I wouldn't need two messaging clients.
Theoretically AIM and ICQ users can message each other but it seems
kind of cumbersome, which is probably why Apple is not including that
feature in iChat.
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