OpenWetWare:Software/Projects/Chat/Discuss

Bill's email (2008-05-17)
"Google soon (within a few weeks) dropped the Huddle Chat source code example. If it were there, I would have lobbied to try it out at least for OWW. Instead, we can use another chat app or an ad-supported version of someone else's chat app. We know there are a few other services offering free chat: we may still go with the best of the lot if we need to."

I may be getting here late in the game, and I don't keep up with the Ruby-on-Rails scene (I should though), but I don't understand what this 'free chat' requirements are. The jabber server idea seems to be working, slightly. It looks like there are occassional technical difficulties, what are the problems? Is there a link to them around here somewhere? I checked out CampFire and it looks like a giant flash application for chat within a browser. I don't know if that's necessary. It's certainly packed with features, but traditional solutions like a cgi chat gateway or even ChatZilla (for firefox users) might be suitable as well. A few years ago I was experimenting with XMLHttpRequest and was doing a system that used XUL, JS, CSS, DHTML, and it was able to do chat in real time, though it lacked presentation and tact, like no file sharing. So what sort of requirements are we interested in here? Would OWW host an irc server if Jabber doesn't work out? http://irchelp.org/ Or just show up on a pre-existing one, like freenode.net, which hosts discussion and chat for free software projects as well as bioinformatics, bio, neurosci, etc. -- Bryan Bishop 15:22, 17 May 2008 (EDT)