If you find traditional chat rooms a bit chaotic, another increasingly popular form of real-time chat software is pagers and instant messaging programs such as:

• ICQ (a pun on "I seek you") or
• AOL Instant Messenger

Basically you compile a "buddy list" of friends and colleagues who also have the software, and ICQ or Instant Messenger will tell you you when any of them is connected to the Internet. Then you can send them real-time messages that instantly pop up on their desktop. Both programs allow you to chat privately with them.

Pagers are a lot of fun, and very easy to use, but they really only make sense if both you and your pager "buddies" are both online a lot (and, obviously, online at the same time).