While the rest of the world is busy Facebooking, MySpacing, and Tweetering, there are those old fashioned-souls who still use AOL's instant messenger. AIM as it is called, does not require you to actually have the AOL service, you just need to have an email address, and you can create your own screenname for free. If the screenname you desire is taken, there actually is an AIM trick that allows
. you to override that. The messaging platform for AIM is pretty basic, there are lots of AIM tricks that can get you around annoying limitations (character limits) or just enable you to send super cute message (drawing koalas, crayons, birds, etc with letters and symbols). Websites such as IMhut (http://www.imhut.com/aimtricks/index.php) give you tons of tricks to test out as well as offering icons for your profile. Aim tricks that annoy your friends (repeated sound effects, making your screenname blink in their buddy list) should probably be used sparingly, unless you want to spend the rest of your cyber days alone.