Chat in Gmail??!!?

People, you notice the coming soon feature in gmail?

Does it mean that another evolution in chatting world is going to occur soon?

When I was in Form 4 & 5 (that would be 8 years ago), I used to chat with friends in ICQ. There is always a long list of green flowers appeared in my ICQ list. Fowler, sandbox, sapphire, me=), babe, psyblade, ching and shin are some of the nicknames that I can still remember until now. There are always some messages come in once I turned on ICQ, the uh-oh sound would be non-stopped. Papa always came in and asked:"Who is that?". Anyone ever wonder why ICQ chooses the uh-oh sound? Uh-oh, someone dropped u a message! It doesn't sound right, isn't it? I think YooHoo, sme one dropped you a message! would be more appropriate.
Hee...the ICQ man's voice is now playing in my head:
"Incoming chat request!"
"Incoming file transfer!"

I remember that there were the horn (should be ctrl+B or wat) and hysterical laughters (ctrl+G or L, hee if anyone still remember, please refresh me!). I used to horn my bf (oops should be my friend that time) as he was so slow in typing. Well, he does not like to chat online! :( As for the hysterical laughters, I used alot when chatting with my jimuis. But I used to turn off the speaker when chatting with them! 'x' Cos, we were like spamming each other with the laughters!

While waiting for SPM result to be released, ICQ is my best buddy. I chatted everyday and sometimes almost forgot to go to bed at night. The earliest record I held to go to bed was 5am in the morning.

Actually, I did re-visit ICQ some time ago in last year. *sigh* My list of friends are still there, but to my horror, NONE of the icq flowers is in Green colour, they are all RED! No one using ICQ anymore. Why? To tell the truth, my reason is: sick with the invisible status there. I always put on invisible and only allowed ppl whom i wished to chat with to see me. After a while, I felt irritated by my act. I believe everyone practising the same way. But if that is the case, you should not add the person at the first place. Why do you want to add someone and never let the person meet you online? Just to extend the list? Then due to this illogical reason, I quit ICQ.

I do not know the reason why my other friends quit ICQ. There are another 2 chatting tools released almost at the same time: Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. Half of my list switch to Yahoo Messenger (YM) and the other half including myself chose MSN Messenger (MM).

At the early stage, I like MM. It is simple with no invisible kinda status. The other limitation of MM which I like is no offline message. You chat with the person only when both online. By this, you will feel more appreciate to chat with each other cos you might not meet each other all the time and you cant leave msg. Odd theory of mine.

In fact, I find that more friends using MM lately. My MM list is getting longer but not reaching the size of ICQ list yet.

That's the evolution once happened where people changing from ICQ to YM or MM. And in few weeks time, I predict that there will be another evolution. See ya and chat in Gmail!