ICQ (I-Seek-You) is a both a recreation and business tool developed by Mirabilis. It allows individuals to send messages, files, play games or chat with other friends and colleagues.

ICQ can help you track down a friend who's on the Internet, transmit documents across the web or conference in real time with a co-worker. ICQ is available for Windows 9x/NT/3.1x/CE, PowerMac, 68K Mac, Java and a beta PalmPilot Version.

Here is a brief overview of how to use ICQ. More information may be obtained directly from the Mirabilis/ICQ site http://www.mirabilis.com or http://www.icq.com. After downloading ICQ, you can install it by double clicking the file (it may be necessary to decompress the zip/gzip/tar - instructions are available on the web site), you will be prompted for some information (to make it easier for other people to find you) such as Name, Location, Handle, etc. You will be given a UIN number - this is basically an ID number which uniquely identifies you.

You can add friends to you ICQ by selecting Add/Find users from the main ICQ User Interface, here you will supply your friends UIN, email address, Nickname or Name. Hopefully ICQ will find the person you were looking for and you can add them to your contact list.

After you have added a friend to your contact list, you will see their Handle (Username) within the ICQ window. The name will move to the Online of Offline list according to their ICQ connection status. To send a message to your contact, simply, double click their name in the ICQ Window and a message dialog box will appear, press Send to send the message. Your contact will receive the message the next time they log onto the ICQ Network, regardless if you are online or not.

To send files to a contact, right click their name in the ICQ window and select File, you will be prompted for the location of the file you wish to transmit (Note: PC/?Mac? users can drag and drop files/directories onto the user's name).

It is also possible to send URLs, initiate IRC or Split Window Chat sessions and start up Telephony applications, I will leave this as an exercise for the user ;)

You can download ICQ from Mirabilis (Free Limited Time Beta - free for a long time…) at http://www.icq.com. Look me up when you get there!