For a long time I hated the “buzz” feature of Yahoo Messenger. Judging by the fact that no other major instant messaging client had included the annoying feature I decided it wasn’t worth worrying about. Several years ago as the number of instant messaging clients I had installed grew and I became more bothered by them with each new OS installation (and as a beta tester, there were quite a few), I gradually let “less important” IM clients, such as Yahoo messenger fall away. The “buzz” feature is one of the things that made me declare it less important. I was always annoyed with the jiggling flashing box and made a point of always turning off the sound that the client made.

Now, in my only IM client, Pidgin,  I find a button marked “attention” which seems to have roughly the same function. Obviously this only works on Yahoo and XMPP, not on OSCAR or other protocols that never considered such functions, but still, it is very annoying. The button in the client is placed in a spot where it is very possible to accidentally tap it. I have not yet been annoyed by being “attentioned” in Pidgin, but I assume the functionality is there. Why must everyone make technology something annoying?