Not many people can say this, but I remember the mid-late 90s when ICQ was still new, not owned by AOL and didn’t have ads all over the interface. I remember when the application was sleek, fast and damn useful because it was the ubiquitous IM client. In fact, you could almost say it was the first truly universal IM client that everyone had.

After AOL bought it, I kind of gave up on it. It went down hill pretty quickly and when ads started appearing in the interface, I lost interest. Kind of the same fate MSN suffered for me as well. In fact no ads in the interface is probably the main reason I am now, and have been for the past few years, so loyal to Google Talk as an IM client.

In January 2007, a company started in Tel Aviv that I think has taken IM to its next possible level. Beyond the whole Web2.0 buzz and combined it with cellphones in a most fantastic way. What does this have to do with ICQ? Well, Avi Shechter was the CEO of ICQ in its early days, and he is also the CEO of this new company.

Read on for a very rushed review of a service I’m finding myself hooked on more and more.

Fring is an IM platform with a difference. While it does provide all the standard features of sending files, text messaging and so on, its intended to be run on your smartphone. Windows Mobile, the (jailbroken) iPhone and the S60 platforms are supported. But where it truly stands out is that if you have a phone that can handle it, it can use both GPRS, 3G/UMTS and Wifi to connect to the internet.

Whats truly smart about this service is that it allows for voice calls over the data connection. And you don’t even need your sim card in the phone if your phone supports Wifi. But not just other Fring users. If you have a Skype account, you can make and receive Skype voicecalls (and chat) including SkypeOut and SkypeIn calls. This means you could call another phone from your cellphone, even if you don’t have a sim card in your cellphone.

Fring supports the voice services of Google Talk, Skype and MSN Messenger. It allows for IM chat with those 3 as well as AOL, ICQ and Yahoo!. But it can also work as a completely independent SIP client, even if your phone doesn’t have native SIP support.

You can even sign in to Twitter via Fring and sent tweets and also receive all the tweets from people you’re subscribed to.

You can create access point groups that allow you to prioritise your different internet connections. So for example, I have mine set so that my home network is always type priority, the wifi at work is second, and after that if there are no free/open WiFi hotspots around it will then start to use the 3G service from my cell provider.

Whats most impressive about all this is that Fring will transparently roam between networks. So when I wake up in the morning, Fring will connect to my home Wifi access point, and when I get in the car and drive to work, it will use the 3G service from Vodafone. Then, when I walk into the building at work, it will automatically switch to the Wifi access point at work. If there are more than one, I can set priorities on those access points and it will also roam between them as long as their WPA keys are setup on the phone.

This is a big deal and a huge change in modern communications. I don’t sign up to many new services like this. In fact, Friendfeed is probably the only recent service I signed up to without another person I know already being there and recommending it. I didn’t even try Twitter until Brooke told me how much she was enjoying it. But this is one service I’m definitely very keen on and happy about.

Even with all the features of Fring that exist now, its only the beginning. A couple of months ago Fring announced an API that would allow third parties to develop addon applications that integrate Fring with their platform. Some of the demonstration applications that came out with the API allowed you to connect to Facebook and chat with your friend on facebook. Another does the same for Orkut. Theres also a video download addon that allows you to search for and watch videos from within Fring.

Of all the native features, my favourite geeky feature has to be the GPS integration as part of “fringME!”. If your phone has built in GPS, Fring can access that information and push it back to the servers. Your friends can then see exactly where in the world Carmen San Diego is. This can be taken outside the native Fring client and integrated with a web widget so that if enabled in the phone client, people on the web can chat with you, and also click a button and see exactly where in the world you are on a Google Map. In real time.

We’re seeing a very similar thing starting on the iPhone 3G with the Loopt service. Nokia Chat integrates very much the same service and I wouldn’t be surprised if Fring does the same as well.

You can find out more about Fring on their What is Fring page. However, if you have a phone that supports it, seriously get it. If you just have a normal phone and don’t mind only having chat features, get the J2ME version. Any phone that supports Java apps will run the J2ME version, but it will only allow IM style chatting. At least it aggregates most of your IM networks into one place and its free. :-)

Its well worth it, and will definitely be staying as a primary app on my Nokia E90.