QQ is an IM (instant messaging) that’s very popular China. Before MSN made any inroad into the China IM market, QQ is virtually the only IM in use in China.
It is so popular that anyone that connects to the internet knows QQ. Nevermind what the Internet is, QQ to many is the Internet.
Like many Chinese softwares, disregard for personal privacy is blatantly non-existance. Since no one ever question about privacy (or even know the idea of privacy), it is taken as a permission to install all kinds of softwares along with the intended package.
Don’t be surprised that after installing a download like QQ, suddenly plugins appears in Internet Explorer, extra softwares appears on the Start menu, strange page starts loading or popping up and who-knows-whatelse , hidden in the system.
And no, you cannot remove them. The condition for using their oh-so-good-you-don’t-have-other-choice software is to continue to compromise your privacy. Wide use, rapidly growing immature market coupled with the lack of choice makes it a very serious problem indeed.
If you are on a number of IM network (ICQ, Yahoo, MSN) and want to chat with your Chinese friends on QQ, Gaim with QQ may be the answer. Read on.
First, if you have not used Gaim before, get and install the lastest Gaim from http://gaim.sourceforge.net/.
Get OpenQ from http://sourceforge.net/projects/openq/. Choose the Win32 (.exe) version from download. Run the OpenQ install.
At this point all the files should have been installed. Follow the next few steps
- Run Gaim.
- Go to Tools->Accounts (or Ctrl+A)
- Click Add
- Choose QQ under Protocol:
- Proceed to fill in your QQ infomation
This is one reason why I use Gaim over other multi-protocol IM client like Trillian. As far as I know, only Gaim can support QQ.
What I like about ?
- Supports QQ on Gaim
- Frees me from having to install the bloated original QQ
Room for improvement
- support file transfer on QQ
- other cosmetic functions that are nice to have which makes QQ so interesting
Where to get it?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openq/
Current version: 0.3.2
Function: QQ plugin for Gaim
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