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Getting Started with ICQ

ICQ ("I Seek You") is a little window that sits on your desktop when you are online, independent from your web browser. Inside the window are the names of your "buddies," people whom you have chosen to put there, in two lists. When one of your "buddies" goes online, her name changes places from the offline list to the online list.

Besides knowing who is online or not, you can perform other actions:

You can send a message to your buddy, which will be delivered immediately and cause a light to blink next to your name on her list. If your buddy is not online, she will receive the message the next time online.
You can send files to your buddy.
You can request a chat session with your buddy. If accepted, two windows open up on each computer, one that shows what you write, the other what your buddy writes. Unlike the "chat room" format, you don't have to press "enter" to send a line -- each keystroke shows up on the other's screen immediately.
Another feature of ICQ is the ability of anyone, whether registered with ICQ or not, to send an immediate page to an ICQ registrant. Each member has his own ICQ number and has a web page form which can be reached from a web browser. For example you can page the Guerneville Online ICQ by clicking here. (Go ahead and try clicking on it -- you don't actually have to send the message.)

Probably the first thing to do is get to their main web page from where you can learn ad nauseum about ICQ and download the (free) program that makes it work.

The fearless can go right to the download page.
The rest of us might want to go to the ICQ homepage to find out more first and then download the program. (The page has a lot on it: try starting with the "Start Here" arrow on the right.)

The rest will be very intuitive and easy. There are a lot of options, but you don't need to know about all of them at once. Mac users will note that there is a special version for them. AOL members may or may not have some problems. Probably they'll do better using Internet Explorer with AOL than the default browser.

Assuming that you now have the ICQ program installed, to see how we may use ICQ to talk with other people at Guerneville Online, click here.

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