Greetings,

Welcome to the new ‘Lets Chat’ section at the Blitz Wargaming Club.  As you may have heard its ‘good to talk’, especially here at the Blitz where friendships are formed and battle groups demolished.  In the spirit of the Blitz we actively encourage communication between members and in this area you can have a look at all the different programs that enable us to communicate with one another.  By clicking the link you should be taken to the homepage of each program from where you can download it.  Ask your online opponents what chat programs they use and then go and get it yourself.  These programs show you when your opponent is online so no more hanging around the message boards waiting for a reply when he could be miles from his computer sunning himself on a beach…LOL

Without further ado we will take a walk through the most popular IM’s or instant messengers out there on the market starting with ICQ.

 ICQ - is an instant messaging computer program, created by Mirabilis, an Israeli start-up company based in Tel-Aviv. The program was first released in November, 1996, and was the first all-internet instant messaging program. ICQ was awarded two major patents by the U.S. patent office. The name ICQ is a play on the phrase "I seek you".

 ICQ is the most popular instant chat program at the Blitz and is used mainly for finding opponents to play online with.  You can have basic chat, push to talk or even video chat so it’s a bit of an all rounder.  The main thing that I personally like about it is the fact that it alerts you when your friends come online and it is fairly straightforward to set up and use.  It also comes downloadable in 5 different languages.

MSN - MSN Messenger is Microsoft's instant messaging client for Windows computers aimed toward the home user. Among its users it is often referred to as MSN, for example, "I'll send it to you over MSN," though in Latin America it is known as "el Messenger," as other instant messaging clients are less popular there.  The major use of the software is for instant messaging, although other features which now come as standard include support for voice conversations, webcams (MSN Messenger 7.0 and later feature full screen audio video conversations), transferring files, and built-in multi-user online games such as Tic Tac Toe. In a similar vein to many of MSN Messenger's competitors, MSN Messenger allows messages to be enlivened with graphical emoticons, sometimes called smileys, Flash animations called winks, animated display pictures and styled text.

 MSN Messenger is actually on its way out as it is to be upgraded with Windows Live Messenger which is the next-generation MSN Messenger. It is part of Microsoft's new online service called Windows Live, and will include everything in MSN Messenger plus new ways to connect and share documents. Currently, the Windows Live Messenger 8 has only been released to beta testers around the world but has been leaked to the public.

SKYPE - is a proprietary peer-to-peer internet telephony (VoIP) network, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the creators of KaZaA and competing against established open VoIP protocols like SIP or H.323. The Skype Group is headquartered in Luxembourg with offices also in London and Tallinn. The system has a reputation for working across different types of network connections (including firewalls and NAT) because voice packets are routed by the combined users of the free desktop software application.  The basic computer-to-computer service allows users to speak, to send instant messages or to send files to one another from their computers via the Internet at no cost. Conferences of up to five users are supported.

Each Skype user must have the Skype software running on his/her computer. This software is available for free and can be downloaded from the company website.

The main difference between Skype and other VoIP clients is that it operates on a peer-to-peer model rather than the more traditional server-client model. The Skype user directory is entirely decentralised and distributed among the nodes in the network, which means the network can scale very easily to large sizes (currently just over forty million users) without a complex and costly centralised infrastructure.

The Blitz Chat Room
Here we offer the opportunity to chat with a friend right here on the Club's own Chat room!