Find the turnaround time for an e-mail response frustrating? Well, you could be speaking to your recipient directly -- and we don't mean via the phone. Rose Vines delves into the alternatives.

When Australia was first colonised there was no such thing as news from home. 'News' from Britain would arrive in the colony long out of date. You could pour out your heart in letters to family back home about the tribulations of life as a pioneer, and by the time their replies of commiseration or advice arrived in your hands, you would have long forgotten what was in your original lamenting epistle.

One of the great delights of the Internet is that it annihilates this geographical time lag. Using the Internet, you can let your dear friend Helga in Oslo know that you're down in the dumps and receive her response while you're still sniffling into your Kleenex. That's not only worlds away from the early colonists' experience, it's also a pretty far cry from a decade or so ago when most of us depended on snail mail.

When the Internet was in its infancy, users interacted by e-mail and newsgroups (Internet-based bulletin boards), and e-mail still makes up the bulk of Internet dealings. Given moderate traffic on the Net and mail servers functioning correctly, e-mail can get from one part of the Net to another in a few seconds. At the outside, it usually takes little more than a couple of minutes, provided there are no problems.

'Real time' means that you and the person you're communicating with are online at the same time and communicate directly with one another. E-mail and newsgroup messages, on the other hand, provide delayed interaction. With e-mail, for instance, you go online and send your e-mail. The recipient receives your e-mail whenever they next check their Inbox, possibly minutes later, possibly days later. It doesn't matter whether the recipient is online or asleep in bed when you send your message, as the message is stored on a server and downloaded to the recipient's Inbox when requested.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is the grandaddy of popular real time interactive programs on the Net. To chat using IRC, you download and install an IRC chat program and then connect to a chat server where you'll find hundreds of chat 'channels' available. Some channels are private, others are open to the public. To connect up with a friend via IRC, you need to let each other know the address of the IRC chat server you will use and the name of the chat channel you'll meet on. You can create your own chat channels and invite friends in.

Internet phone programs add an audio component to online chatting, allowing you to hear and be heard. To use such a program you need a soundcard, speakers and microphone as well as an Internet connection.

Video conferencing programs add a visual element, allowing you to see those you converse with and frequently allowing you to collaborate on work by means of a virtual 'whiteboard'. They have the same equipment requirements as Internet phone programs, and also require a video capture card and camera. If only one of you has the necessary video equipment, you can still use video conferencing programs but the pictures will flow only one way.

Both phone and video programs suffer from the slowness of connections on the Internet despite using some very smart compression techniques to get their performance up to an almost acceptable level. While there have been major improvements in the quality of such programs, they have a long way to go. You'll still find a normal old telephone vastly superior in quality and less prone to errors than an Internet phone, and the small, jerky video that you can get on most connections will make you hanker for an ISDN line.

Netscape's alternative
Netscape's AOL Instant Messenger Service is an alternative messaging program. The 'AOL' stands for America Online, the world's largest online service with over 11 million members. Almost all of those members are in the US. The program's name is a little confusing: while it's designed to be compatible with AOL's own messaging system, you can use it whether you're an AOL member or not. And, if you have friends in the US or elsewhere who are members of AOL, this is a great way to get in contact. If you have the latest release of Communicator, open the Communicator Menu and look for an option called AOL Instant Messenger. If it's not there, you can download the program using Netscape's SmartUpdate  (http://home.netscape.com/ download/su1.html). The installation program will add the option to your menu.
AOL Instant Messenger doesn't compete with ICQ for features, but it has a stylish interface and is very simple to use. When you select the Instant Messenger option in Communicator (you can also run it without opening Communicator itself, by locating it in your Start Menu Programs) you'll start off with an empty contact list.	To populate your contact list, click the AOL Instant Messenger button and choose Find a Buddy to locate them by their e-mail address. If they're not already registered as a user, you can send a message to encourage them to sign up.   If you want to be selective about who can contact you, use the Options, Edit Preferences, Privacy option to set up settings.	You can create groups to categorise your contacts, and then assign different preferences and privileges to each group.

ICQ is not new: it's been in seemingly permanent beta -- computer speak for 'testing' -- since 1996. Don't let the 'beta' tag deter you: ICQ is completely stable and tested, and the beta label seems to apply more to the company's marketing intentions than the product itself. Since its release, ICQ has been free to download and use, although Mirabilis has hinted that it may charge for the program once it gets out of beta. It remains to be seen whether the company will eventually charge for the product or whether it will raise money in another way, either through advertising or by selling the technology (why hasn't Microsoft snapped this program up?).

When it burst on the scene in 1996, ICQ was a revolutionary program, one which made people sit back and gasp with delight at its ingenuity and features. In the 18 months since its birth, ICQ has undergone major development and the recently release version 98a has greatly boosted the privacy features, as well as adding many other touches. The program is now so jam-packed with features that its major drawback is its overwhelming array of options. But even in this, ICQ shows its class, with its default interface displaying a basic set of options with all the complexity and power hidden behind a switch.

Apart from its great set of features, the other thing that makes ICQ special is the huge number of people who use it and its cross-platform availability. Currently there are over 7,500,000 users, with membership growing at around half a million per month. You can download versions of ICQ for Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 3.x, and the Macintosh, and there's a Java version which runs on several platforms, including Linux. Chances are, if your contacts are not yet using ICQ they'll have no trouble in getting it up and running on their computers, no matter what hardware they're running.

Chatting and conferencing are also time intensive. If you're trying to get some work done or relax surfing the Net, chatting with someone interrupts the process almost completely, as you need to give most of your attention to what's going on in the conversation.

With ICQ, none of this matters. The program alerts you each time someone on your contact list comes online. You then have a range of options in how you communicate:

• You can send them a message, which they'll receive almost immediately. You can attend to your own incoming messages whenever you like: immediately, when you have a moment to spare, or even next time you log on.
• You can invite them to chat. There's no messing around with going to a chat server or creating a chat room. ICQ automatically creates a chat room for you, and lets you invite others into the room as well.
• You can send a file directly to another user.
• You can send a URL to another user, enabling them to join you at a Web site, or store the Web address for later use.
• You can send someone e-mail.
• You can page people.
• You can use ICQ as a launching pad for many other chat, Internet phone, video conferencing or interactive games programs.

ICQ also lets you send messages via the ICQ server. This is great when you want to leave a message for someone who's not currently online: you send the message, ICQ stores it on its server, and when the recipient logs on the message is delivered.

With ICQ, you can join the ongoing party and let everyone know you're online and even make yourself available for random chat with strangers. Or, if you're feeling reclusive, you can hang up a 'do not disturb' sign. You can also make yourself visible to some people on your contact list and invisible to others. In fact, there are eight different levels of visibility/availability from which you can choose.

The nicest part is you can set different options for each of those levels with each of your contacts. Even in Do Not Disturb mode you can choose to receive messages or files from particular users.

All of this flexibility in terms of contact and privacy modes makes ICQ one of the most powerful and useable Internet messaging solutions while still being one of the least intrusive.

If you'd like to try one of the other programs mentioned, check out the following Web sites.

Internet Relay Chat:
mIRC, http://mirc.eon.net.au/

Internet phones:
WebPhone, www.webphone.com
VocalTec IPhone, www.vocaltec.com/iphone4/ip4_dnld.htm

Video chat:
CU-SeeMe, www.cu-seeme.com
Intel Internet Videophone,  http://connectedpc.com/cpc/videophone/takepeek.htm

Video conferencing/whiteboard:
Microsoft NetMeeting, www.microsoft.com/netmeeting