Communication (Chat!)

First of all, if you want to meet a lot of gamers who aren't jerks or fakers, check out Kali.  Kali has jerks, but it's not nearly as bad as your average web chat (and a lot of conversation is NOT about games- you don't even have to play games at all to like Kali, but it's what draws us together).  Kali is covered in the Pompous Guide under Games.

Once you've made some online friends, the best and cheapest way to stay in touch with them is through ICQ.  The ICQ program designed to take up as little space as possible, and it starts up whenever you connect to the internet.  When you install it, it adds a little icon to your Win95 tray (the little box down at the bottom under the start menu).  Double click it, and you can see which the people in your ICQ address book are online.  Then, and it doesn't matter what they're doing online, you can send them a message, request a chat, or send them a file or internet link.  ICQ has a built in chat that's pretty good (looks a bit like Kali 's chat and you can have multiple people.  Sometimes people try to "stuff the chat" by getting all their friends to join in one chat window), or there's a list of chat programs you can download through ICQ that'll let you talk.  I sometimes use CoolTalk, a program that lets you speak into a microphone and hear the other person through the speakers if you have a sound card.  And yes, there are even programs supported for video if you have a camera.  Small and easy to use, ICQ is an excellent way to keep in touch with the thousands of people you don't know and the few that you do.  Best of all, the software and service are completely free!  The company offers  several different ways to make new contacts (and some help forums) on their web page at http://www.mirabilis.com.  But first, download ICQ for free from http://www.mirabilis.com/downloadicq.html.  Important: many people believe that ICQ is unreliable and crashes a lot.  This is because they are only connecting to the default servers, which get overloaded from the multitude of new users.  Lists of fast ICQ servers are online at http://www.waynesworld.com/ICQservers.html, http://www.k-online.com/~wongway/icq.htm, and http://members.xoom.com/mirabilis/enter.html.

The shareware program mIRC is an excellent utility which accesses enormous IRC networks.  Microsoft Chat is a separate program which accesses the same IRC networks, but it turns the plain text into cartoon characters with expressions and speech balloons.  Microsoft Chat is also much more limited than mIRC, because mIRC allows more programming of scripts and menu pop-ups.

The IRC networks are also accessable on this page if your browser supports the Java programming language.  This will only allow you to be on one channel at once, but mIRC and Microsoft Chat can let you join as many as you want, if they're on the same network.  To use the web version below, click the "user info" button and type in your nickname and name (most people never use their real names).  Then click the connect button and pick a server. join the channel (chat room) "#hackphreak" on the Undernet network, through the network's server in Oslo, Norway (oslo.no.eu.undernet.org).

Sorry, your browser is not Java enabled. See the browsers section of the Guide.

This application requires Java suport.
This server also available via IRC at:
%hostname%:%port%

These are the only chat programs I've found worthy of pompousness, although there are many out there.  If I felt my standards starting to slip, the Guide would probably include free web chats such as the-park and wbs.

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