Plug in to the chatterbox

SHELLEY HOWELLS reaches out and touches people - with a little help from MSN and ICQ.

What a great assignment: go out and seek internet chat and messaging.

Hmm. It was great for the first day.

After that, the banality, the porn, the excessive number of brain-numbing downloads (read: system crashes) began to take their toll.

I love instant messaging because one of the many perils of working from home (along with cookie overdose and Oprah - www.oprah.com - addiction) is the borderline-nutso state of mind that comes from spending too many hours alone, staring at a computer screen.

Ironically, it is that same screen that has eased some of that isolation for this borderline nutso. Instant messaging as office substitute. Chatrooms as staff cafe equivalent.

As I work, MSN Messenger and/or ICQ are often running in the background.

These natty wee free downloads let me know when registered friends are online and logged on, and allow us - one on one or as a group - to have real-time typed conversations.

These range from helpful work-related chats to trivia and social arrangements. Just like in a real office.

Sometimes, especially when working late at night, conversation isn't even necessary, it's just nice to know that a mate is there in the background working too.

Like most computer-related things, I don't use half of it.

It's possible to customise colour, typeface and sound effects. You can have your machine speak your messages and you can choose the level of privacy you are comfortable with - from free-for-all, anyone can contact you, to shutting off all but your mates.

You can also choose how much information about yourself is publicly available so, for instance, you may advertise that you are terribly interested in oral hygiene and needlepoint, but not willing to state that you are a 15-year-old Moroccan male with ADHD. Or you can leave your public profile blank.

MSN Messenger (my current favourite, because most friends use it, though I started as an ICQ devotee) and ICQ have websites full of member profiles and chatrooms in which one can trawl for like-minded strangers (searching by specifics such as age, interests, location) to chat with, either in the public chatrooms or privately.

Having lately discovered a long-lost friend (on the net), I have started to use ICQ again because he can't, or won't, set up MSN Messenger. This is a pain because, at times, I have to have both running at the same time, which is more than a gal - even an iMac gal - can cope with.

Technology - via the likes of Jabber and Trillian - has come to the rescue, with yet more soon-to-be essential cunning downloads which allow users to send and receive instant massages across networks.

I'm sure these are marvellous, but I'll wait a while to use them because Jabbernaut was too fiddly to use for my (simplistic) liking, and Trillian hasn't a Mac version out yet.

I've also been known to frequent the odd Yahoo! chatroom. These rooms, and similar online chat sites (such as Talk City and a thousand others easily found through your favourite web directory), appeal because no downloading is involved, just registration and time to get a cuppa while the system loads.

Countless topics are available, so if you can't find your passion listed, you are truly a unique individual and may have to start your own room.

Chat can be useful. I spent a lot of time in Yahoo! parenting chatrooms when I was living overseas struggling to work out which end was which of the newborn.

Chat can be a waste of time. Yes, curiosity got the better of me and I did check out adult chatrooms, only to discover that I'm much more easily shocked than I thought, and that cyber sex is so popular it looks set to be the next Olympic demonstration event.

And until you make friends there, it is mostly banal, with typical smalltalk that seems even smaller when seen in print. It's not necessary to hit adult rooms to get offers to view free XXX pix etc - such invitations and sundry rude people do turn up in the most benign of rooms. The best sites allow users to 'ignore' pesky types so you don't even know they are still hassling you.

Enter the avatar

"Avatar" chat lets users "see" each other while they talk. Sort of.

The best-known site is The Palace (other avatar chat sites include Dreamchat and Active Worlds).

After downloading the software, you can head into a wild assortment of graphic locations (traditional chatrooms are just blank pages to type on, and you usually appear as just your user name) - from hell itself (all rocks and burning flames) to outer space (complete with shooting stars and entire planets to explore) to medieval food halls, courtrooms and playgrounds.

The kick here is that, instead of appearing as a typed user name, you select an icon to represent you, and can then click-and-drag your fantasy self - be it smiley face, elf, teenager, banana, Telecom dog or Satan himself - around these rooms.

You type in your conversation and it appears as a speech bubble coming from your avatar.

It can be disconcerting: there was I (represented by a pair of jeans and platform shoes because my torso and head kept falling off) casually chatting with a burning skeleton in a commercial kitchen, only to be interrupted by speeding male genitals being chased by a winsome pixie in a crop-top.

In these rooms, it is not deemed polite to sit on the heads of other chatters.

Chat nirvana ... for geeks

And so we come to my chat nemesis: IRC (internet relay chat).

IRC is another way of exchanging text messages with people all over the world. The difference between IRC and web-based chat such as Yahoo!, is that you need to download an IRC 'client' (much like you need a web browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer to use the world wide web). Once downloaded and installed, you can log on to one of many IRC servers and away you go. Theoretically.

My abiding love of things simple-to-the-point-of-simplistic (Mac user, remember) means I cannot find a good word to say for the complex torture of learning IRC. I tried.

After downloading and experimenting with Snak and Ircle, the most popular Mac clients, and returning to them many times, I can only conclude that it's a PC thing. A PC geek thing.

They laughed at me for being a Mac user, which was even more shocking than Adult chat on Yahoo! as I naturally feel superior to PC-devotees. IRC was completely bewildering - far too complicated, too many mysterious technical messages.

There are many "beginner" rooms in which a person can learn the ropes, and loads of helpful people there, but I just couldn't see the point of going to all that trouble. So I asked a friendly expert from one of the bigger IRC networks, DALnet, to explain the appeal.

He agreed that you'll find a lot of "computer nuts" on IRC, and went on to explain what he sees as the benefits, starting with sound: "MP3s and wavs can be played to users who have the same sound file on their computer. You can also send and receive music files. This can be done automatically or manually, depending on your preference."

He also mentioned 'popups': "These are coloured ASCII text that can be drawn to shapes and patterns ... can be a lot of fun to make but also hard work ... and some of them are extremely clever and pretty".

File sharing, said the expert, is a big bonus because you can, "find just about any file or program you can think of if you know where to look.

"Sending and receiving files can also be done automatically or manually".

Then there is the sheer volume of people and topics on IRC. DALnet - just one network - has more than 36,000 channels ("on any subject you might wish to know more about, from medicine, law, computers, or even gardening") to be going on with.

Whatever your preferred method of internet chat, don't expect instant buddies.

Making friends with strangers online is much as it is in the flesh. Work out the group's dos and don'ts by hanging around a bit first.

Start with smalltalk and then move on, often to private rooms or instant messaging.

And prepare to go through quite a learning curve when trying out a new system for the first time.

Above all, the chatters of the world declared, read the instructions/rules before heading in.

In other words: BTW IMHO FWIW, RTFM, LOL. TTFN. (By the way, for what it's worth, in my humble opinion. Read the ... manual. Laughs out loud. Ta ta for now.)

Chatting safely

* Never give out personal information: Use fake info when registering, and use web-based (hotmail, yahoo etc), anonymous email addresses if you must. Take time to check through all the preferences/options to ensure you have selected the safest options, such as 'ignore all' in DCC (direct client to client which allows individuals to communicate directly) options.

* Practise Safe File Transfer: Don't accept files from strangers, as they may be riddled with viruses. This is a tough one, as much of the fun of IRC is exchange of software and music files. At the very least, try to ensure that you are being sent what they say they are sending.

* Be very selective: Many quality conversations don't take place in public - much talk is via DCC and private messages. But private messages leave your machine (and you) vulnerable, so be careful about whom you agree to talk to.

* Avoid: Visiting websites that you may be advised while in chatrooms to look at (chat spam) - many carry foul computer diseases.

* Do not: Type in an instruction/code that you don't understand.

* Additional IRC safety and newbie information is available at sites such as New ICusers and IRC Help

Links

Oprah

Messenger.com

ICQ

Jabber

Trillian

Dreamchat

Active Worlds

Talk City

Snak

Ircle