If you have an image file that you want to make into an icon, look no further than Bradicon! It’s a web-based icon generation tool that allows you to generate icons from just about any image file. The website provides both an “advanced” and a “simple” interface to their scripts, but the simple interface has produced the best results for me. Some hints that I have learned are to upload only square images to the site, otherwise it will automatically crop the pictures and make sure the pictures have transparent backgrounds.

The Lifehacker website has a great article on using GAIM to send/receive encrypted IM messages.

An interesting thing about IM without encryption is that any packet sniffer application (ethereal is the one I use most) can pickup and read the entire conversation without any difficulty at all; most IM programs send the entire conversation in plain text for the entire world to see.