The first thing you need to do is Grab a client My personal favourite is Psi, a crossplatform slim and slick client that I feel is better because I can opt to have incoming events as messages or chats (or just leave them as they came), opt to pop up the window, automatically show the message, or just flash in the tray (especially important when you type over 100WPM and someone messages you out of the blue), it's open source, I've created a few patches to help make the client better (IMO), and it's under active development. You never really tell us exactly what it is, or provide a link for more info. Who needs AOL? Not any of us!!ДЄfter your inspiring speach about Jabber. Now my Jabber roster has over 100 contacts, after successful conversion of all of my friends and family. I'm already AOL-free, as I quit AIM and ICQ earlier this year. Even if you just have each other in your contact list and no one else, you are securing yourself a place in the future of open IM. This move to link AIM and ICQ is a good first step, but there is more to be done. I still think it will take a move by AOL to fully solve this (as I said, they have most of the cards), but I think if the entire tech community embraced Jabber we would have a lot more influence. Or if you can't quit cold-turkey, use GAIM so that you can use Jabber alongside these other proprietary protocols. Stop using AIM, ICQ, MSN, or Yahoo, especially if you are on Linux (doesn't anyone think using MSN on Linux is just too ironic?). Please, guys, the faster we move to Jabber, the faster this war will be over. Even in this Slashdot forum today, most of you using some form of IM are using an AOL-controlled service. I still encourage everyone out there to start using Jabber and run Jabber servers, but AOL's users totally outnumber us. Of course, considering how long it is taking for them to link their own damn networks, I'd say we've got about 5 years to go :(ДЄOL holds most of the cards for IM interoperability. They can still use OSCAR for client communication (just as they use a proprietary client mail protocol and not POP), but they need to use Jabber on the outside (as they use SMTP on the outside) to fully solve the 'IM Interoperability Dilemma' (tm). Now that the IETF working group for Jabber is on its way, I sincerely hope that AOL will consider using it for their server-to-server communication. It's a nice trick, but there is a lot more to solving IM interoperability. If you are logged into AIM and ICQ from one client, the networks are not bridged whatsoever. Lots of people in the comments are posting about client-side workarounds, which don't even solve the problem.

What is an icq number