[Simon]

Same advice here. If you use a Mac, you can try Fire instead of Trillian and add all your icq, aim, msn, yahoo (and other) accounts. Of course, if everyone you know only uses icq, and icq itself is down, then you're still incommunicado until icq comes back up. But if they use some of the other services too, then you'll have a way to reach them. And it's nice having all chat services running in one client (like with Fire, Trillian, and some others).

HTH