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The intriguing world of MSN
Who doesn’t like to chat! Most of us spend some time every day chatting with friends, relatives and co-workers. When it comes to online life, chat mania seemed to have its impact felt on our lives in many ways; from users exchanging dial-up connection passwords to ISPs joining the bandwagon with special night packages just for the chat addicts.
Chatting has come along way since its inception, with Mirc being the most popular chatting forum, this interactive mode of communication has moved away from random clicks and joining crowded chatrooms to more personalized form of chat known as Instant Messengers or IM. One of the hey-days IM was ICQ, the trendsetter for the rest, such as, AOL’s AIM, Yahoo Messenger. However, the entrance of Microsoft, in this business, took the online community by storm, snatching a major share of users with the introduction of undoubtedly the most popular of all IMs, MSN messenger.
With no option of offline messages, as in Yahoo IM and ICQ, MSN still continues to dominate the local chat scene. Cyber cafes are flocked with MSN chatters and if the application is found not working, a new customer is forewarned: “Bhai! MSN nehi chal raha aaj . . . !”
The attractiveness is there because of the interface? We don’t know! Or that people just love it, or for its wide array of features and incorporation with Hotmail. Whatever the reason may be, people just use it and with the passage of time only find their contact-list growing.
The MSN keeps up to the expectations of its users by introducing new features and enhancements every now and then. Moreover, a number of software developers have dedicated a good amount of time for developing third-party utilities and tools for MSN program. These certainly add spice to the ever admired MSN program.
Features in MSN
Basic chat features are common in all instant messagers, but users are more interested in some attractive features that come alongside the basic functions of chatting. In this respect MSN is loaded with such cool features. You can have voice communications; chat via camera; make phone calls (paid feature); send SMS to mobile devices (in selected countries at this time); join general chat areas (if you are more interested in finding new friends than trying to talk to the ones already present on your list); find people having related interests, turning on/off the pictorial zombies (MSN calls them emoticons); support for proxy server; creation of public profile which other can see (as a web page) to get user profile; browse through same web pages with an online contact (feature available if MSN Explorer 8 is installed); get .Net alerts via emails and more.
MSN has proved to be a handy utility when it comes to saving time. Its tight integration with other Microsoft products and services, such as Outlook XP can start MSN with itself and Outlook Express, makes it a one-click matter to have a look at your contact list and Address Book for sending emails.
MSN is also useful for sending files to a remote contact, works typically well when file size is low but when the size gets large (in MBs), the transfer may give some problems (talking of local tests). There are various features in MSN which are resource hungry, especially when it comes to resources of our mediocre phone lines and ISPs, these include starting remote assistance program, whiteboard and application sharing and to an extent, online gaming.
One area where it excels as compared to Yahoo IM, is that it updates the status promptly. You won’t be sending a message to someone who is offline for ages yet appearing online - something very common in Yahoo IM.
So far, the only glitch that has been reported in the version 5 is that of not signing-in promptly, (as our tests indicates the latest version taking more time to login than its older versions) and at times freezing all together. But it is expected that the fix patch will be made available shortly.
Tricks’n’games
To jazz up users’ MSN experience alot of add-in are being developed that enhances MSN’s functionality. One such popular software is mentioned below:
MSN Plus 2.0: It is a third party add-in to MSN which adds an array of options otherwise not present by default in MSN program, provided by Microsoft.
This add-in allows you to disable the ad banners, set the messenger and messages windows transparent (0-100 per cent calibrated control), and can increases the maximum character count for outgoing messages. It has an option of setting up quick texts. Let’s say, you want to greet AoA (in full form) at the beginning of every chat, all you will have to do is to press ALT+ (number of quick text you have set), for instance, ALT+1.
Chat Log option is also available in this program for recording text both chat and events so you can reflect back on your chats afterwards (online and offline both). To fulfill your James Bond instincts, it has got option of “Boss Key,” a key combination you can set to hide/show MSN if you are using it in an environment where you are not supposed to. Also it has got an instant lock option in case you have to leave your desk for a while and don’t want anyone else to meddle with your online contacts.
Its text recall feature is very useful which enable you to recall the last typed text lines. With a press of a key, you can re-type what you had already written. So it saves you time and hassle to type the same piece of text over if for some reason it could not be communicated to destination. MSN Plus also lets you check four different POP3 accounts simultaneously and use MIRC-like text commands, such as by typing “/away” you set your mode to “Away.”
Negative tools
Now about some utilities which are largely marked as infamous by the victims of these. Some of them are mentioned here:
Fake MSN: This is supposed to work as a key logger, saving ID and password of someone who has tried to logged in using its fake MSN like interface. As this utility can’t be used remotely, the only way it can be of some help is for the people who have physical access to other’s PCs or other’s use their PC. For instance, networked environments, one home / office having several users, cyber cafés and such. Because such and other loggings cum spying tools are available far easier than before, it’s always advisable not to login into your account except from your home (or other secure PC). But if you have to, make a different ID to use from public places and make sure its password is not the same as your any other password.
Flooders and laggers: These are only annoyance tools. Flooders sends a stream of text a particular number of times, this number is sometimes there for you to choose, or depends upon the number of clicks you do on “send” button. The ones we used for test were “Flooder + Lagger” and “Mass Message” both worked well and with good speeds. Sometimes you get a failed delivery message, which actually MSN generates, that says the same thing as when you are sending a message to a remote user who has just signed out. The lagger part is supposed to send simile figures (as mass message); a year or so ago, this was known to create problems at other side by crashing MSN. Some utilities let you do status flood, where your contacts constantly get alerts that you have changed your status. Some let you display up to four alerts for a single login with different nicks.
MISCELLANEOUS
Some utilities are for you own fun only. One such is MSN Back Fire that lets you change the default warning message of “Never give your password . . .” that appears as soon as you open a chat window. Also, there are many other utilities of same nature that let you change various attributes, such as changing colour of your chat text, nick changer, putting time as nick, scrolling it, status flood, etc.
A program named “Shock Version 2,” offers a cache of different options including an ASCII lab where you can change your nick to all those funky waved un-readable (and unbearable) characters.
In Windows XP, you can use Character Map tool to enter special characters as display nick. Even Urdu like characters are given there if you scroll down and select them to create your name. However, it must be kept in mind that that text will only be recognized by Windows XP or Windows 2000 users. To access Character Map go to Start> Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Character Map).
MSN surely is one of the most robust and widely used IM today. It’s fast-loading interface, quick chat with relatively low number of missed messages and its updating with alerts when you get a new mail on your Hotmail account makes MSN, all in all, a powerful chatting tool.
The writer
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