America Online's Instant Messenger (AIM) is going mainstream; and if you're not using it for business now, you might in the near future.

Most of us see AOL Instant Messenger as a bit of a headache. It's that online service that our teenagers (and preteens) use instead of the phone. They spend hours at a time chatting with their friends instead of doing their homework or cleaning their rooms. But maybe they simply beat us to an important tool that we could have been using all along.

Not all adults are clueless about AIM. IDC estimates that 30 percent of consumer instant messaging accounts are used for business. I know of several software development companies where IM is one of the main communications mechanisms, especially when employees are on-site at customers or in other cities (even other countries). You don't have to worry about the cost of the call or whether the phone line is engaged. Just send an IM while you're working. One of my close associates even keeps hers open at her office all day long so her children can check in.

On Monday, AOL introduced another way to take advantage of this compelling interactive technology -- by officially linking it with Microsoft Outlook. Since Outlook is omnipresent in business, this is a strong way to link AIM to the business user.

AIM Sync, as the new feature is called, synchronizes AIM and Outlook much the way many users synchronize their PDAs to Outlook, using a technology created by Intellisync, and now in beta. Users can add their Outlook contacts to their AIM buddy lists and match screen names to e-mail addresses, thus making it easy to move from e-mail to instant message during the course of the day. Once synchronized, if an AIM buddy is online, the corresponding contact listing in Outlook will show it. Just click to chat online.

AOL has been moving lately to turn clueless adults into sophisticated Instant Messenger users at work. The company's AIM@work program now offers voice conferencing and Web meetings as well as AIM Sync. Since businesses are often nervous about their employees using tongue-in-cheek names such as lillady362436, the company also offers AIM screen names with your corporate domain integrated. So you can use lillady362436@yourcompany.

"What'd she say?"

Speaking of clueless adults ... You do know that your children have a language they use to keep you in the dark while they IM each other; don't you? Many of the acronyms come from the acronyms with which we've grown up -- so there's no surprise. TGIF means "Thank God, it's Friday." PU means "That stinks." ZZZ means "sleeping, bored, or tired." Thank goodness some things never change.

But if you ever notice POS on the screen, you can bet that your child has something to say of which you might not approve. POS means parent over shoulder, and is the not-so-subtle way of saying, "Watch what you say because my parent may see it on screen."

A bigger hint that you've almost caught your child red-handed is when you walk near the screen and all of a sudden all the IM windows disappear or minimize. That's a cover-up worthy of the old screen saver program that slackers used when they were playing computer games at work. That screen saver looked like a Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel spreadsheet. In all likelihood, if you never saw one, somebody on your staff was probably putting one over on you. Then again, it might have been on your screen -- and your old boss is only now finding out about your work habits by reading this column.

For the Web

Netlingo's list of text messaging shorthand: www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm.

AIM@Work: www.aimatwork.com/