Also, the gel of Aloe Vera ([en.wikipedia.org] alleviated all my itching in Australia. Some hippies at Byron told me this and cut it directly out of the bush:D

check out jitsi, which supports most of the popular protocols(ICQ, MSN, XMPP...) and, if jitsi on the other end, can do voice/webcam/remote desktop via XMPP.

Check out Jitsi for Windows, Linux and MacOS: [jitsi.org] (formerly sip-communicator) as a multi-messenger. Webcam/Audio works with Jabber/jingle aka XMPP(free chat protocol), the same that Google Chat/Talk uses, so you're also able to call your friends on GT.