ICW tells you who’s calling when you’re online and lets you decide how to handle the calls, without needing any additional equipment or extra phone line. If someone calls while you’re online, the ICW Call Manager window with the caller’s name and number appears on screen.

You can set up ICW to answer the call on the same phone line you are using to access the Internet, on another phone line such as your cell phone, play an announcement to the caller or have the caller leave a VoiceNote. The Voice Note is sent to your email address that you can play with your built-in QuickTime software. You can even screen the Voice Note, by listening as the caller leaves the message.

The ICW Mac client software has been under development for a little while, and it is now available as a “free” public Beta. Built from the ground-up as a Mac application, the Mac version of ICW has the fundamental Mac look in the redesigned Call Manager interface. And while it doesn’t have Voice over IP, it does have some pretty cool stuff that you won’t find on the PC version, including an option to have your Mac verbally announce incoming phone calls!

The Mac development team in the eXtremeVoice division of Nortel is working hard to bring this product to a final candidate stage. However, Nortel is still gauging the demand for the product in the Mac community. People interested in petitioning Nortel to bring ICW to market should email ICW4Mac@eXtremeVoice.com.