Instant messaging is probably the most effective way to conveniently stay in touch with friends despite busy schedules and distances. Like telephone conversations, your dialog develops in real-time with short instant responses. However, like email, messages are not intrusive and do not demand one's immediate and focused attention; that remains optional.

Being with someone in person, of course, provides a far deeper connection supporting so much non-verbal communication. Still, just as you hear tone of voice through the telephone, experienced chatter can develop an openess and sensitivty to an even wider range of "non-verbal" cues. This is explicity done using emotes, typing things like :) or when you smile, *g* when you grin, *lol* when you "laugh out loud". More detailed emotes like *jumping into your lap and curling up in a ball* are also common. Also, a great deal can be inferred without being explicit simply by carefully watching such things as how long folks pause before typing, their use of capitalization, and even their spelling.

The key to deeper communication through instant messaging is coming to know the person you're chatting with, and listening to the subtle details. After a while, you learn how quickly people type and can tell how distracted they are. You learn how familiar with and honest they are using emotes; for instance, do they feel comfortable enough with to say *crying* (which is rather tough to type while it's happening, but very important). If someone always let's you know when they step away (e.g., "brb" for be right back) and they don't respond for quite a while, it might well suggest they are finding it difficult to share their thoughts and feelings. And with really tense conversations, you might spot spelling and grammer errors as people become more emotional.

Getting Set Up

There are several instant messaging services available today, each with their own subtle strengths and weaknesses. To remain most available, I use accounts on several of the most popular ones (listed below). Note: these are all free and do NOT require you use these company's other services at all. To avoid having a seperate program and interface for each, I recommend using and instant messaging client which consolidates access to all these such as Trillian. Doing this, you do give up some of the more advanced features of these services. However, the convenience, flexibility, lack of advertising, and it's own special features more than make up for this.

Here's where you can find me (known as "Aquae Atrae") in cyberspace:

* SoulSeek is really a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system like Napster was. It is not incorporated into clients like Trillian at this point, but primarily serves to share music collections and other media.

Note: There is no need to download each of these programs seperately if you install Trillian. It provides the means to register your accounts with these services itself.

Setup and use any one of these services to stay in touch with me. In fact, I am probably online right now!