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Chat in Relationships?

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:56:49 -0800

How do you deal with instant messaging early in a relationship? I've just started dating a woman that I've known for a about a year. We both use GChat and tend to be logged in fairly frequently.

Given that it's early in the relationship, it seems overbearing to be communicating every day. Email is just as instant (in our age of BlackBerries at least), but a chat program has a "presence" that makes it seem weird to be logged on all the time without saying anything.

So far I've dealt with this in part by not being logged in so much, but also this change in behavior (and she knows how much I was logged in before) seems odd. How have you dealt with this?

Other details that might matter: it's long distance, so we don't see each other that frequently, so far it's been visit once a month, talk on the phone a little more frequently than once a week, e-mail and chat more in between.

Reuniting with a headmaster for an expensive school in Australia named Ron..

Quarter Pincher — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:54:53 -0800

I'm looking for a forgotten chat-friend from over 10 years ago. All I remember is that his first name is Ron, and he was a headmaster at a school in eastern Australia, got to drive a Aston Martin as a work benefit, and once took a group of students to visit America in the Seattle area. He gave me some advice that I later took up, and would like to tell him how much of a difference (good) it's made. I might remember his last name if I saw it. Is there a way to find a list of headmasters of all schools in eastern Australia, that are wealthy enough to offer their headmasters an Aston Martin as a company car? I recall him having told me the name of the school and I looked up the site just once, back then, so I might vaguely recall that if I saw it, also. Any ideas on where to start looking?

Finding a new reflecting pool

gypseefire — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:45:25 -0800

Once upon a time I found myself in an amazing chat room where people actually discussed spirituality, politics, dreams, ologies etc...and did so in a respectful manner. This room was very engaging, challenging and inspiring and I am searching for a new discussion group or chat room that is similar in its dynamic. Any suggestions?

Suggestions for Online Support Chat Application

Lord Widebottom — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:56:27 -0800

My company is looking at adding a "chat with tech support online" feature from our support website. I have dug around on the intertubes and found a lot of marketing material, but would like to know if any folks here have experience with implementing that kind of product and are willing to make recommendations.

Our Requirements are fairly simple: It has to be hosted on site (so no external providers), and has to integrate with IIS. Any suggestions?

We Are The Very Expensive World

rokusan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:13:47 -0800

Four iPhone users: USA, Canada, England, Mexico. All with different carriers. What free/cheap voice options are there? All right, we've got a little group of four friends. One in USA (AT&T, that's me), one in Canada (Rogers), one in England (O2), and one in Mexico (TelCel). All legit unbroken iPhones registered in their own countries and using the usual App Store(s).

Long distance is killing us all, and conference calls are worse.

With all the IP telephony out there, there must be a better way, so what are our best choices for at least one-to-one voice conversations (is iPhone Skype available in all these countries? Something else?) and ideally ad-hoc three- and fourway voice calls?

Lower priority: text messaging is also stupidly expensive, ranging from the 20¢/msg I seem to be paying for "international texting" (AT&T = whores) to about fifty cents, which is what the UK person is being charged. So a cheaper way to do that would be nice too.

Free is best, but anything cheaper than traditional long-distance is worth considering. Onetime costs or subscriptions... something to stop us from spending an extra $100+ per month each on phone calls to the same three people every time.

Most of us are on the move too much for land-line options, unless they're very portable in an ad-hoc way that forwards.

How can I have Google Voice send my SMS to an instant message service such as Google talk?

jesirose — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:50:12 -0800

How can I have Google Voice send my SMS to an instant message service such as Google talk? I have no text messaging plan, however I have a google voice account. (Formerly Grand Central). I also have the chat in Gmail and an AIM account. I have an app for my iPhone beejive IM which thanks to 3.0 can now push my messages to the phone.

So. If there is a number I can forward the SMS messages to which will send them to my GTalk chat or an AOL im screenname, I can then be notified instantly, instead of having to check the website for texts.

Googling turned up something about a 406 number for GTalk but I cannot find the info I apparently need.

Thanks!!

(No, I don't have any Google Voice invites, they're not doing them. Sorry :( )

700 Acquaintances, One Sentence Each.

StrikeTheViol — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:04:30 -0800

I'd like to make more friends online. Suggestions? (MeFi demographic a plus.) A bunch of the people I usually talk to have scattered for various reasons, and it's not easy for me to get out as much as I'd like, so I'd like to find more people to talk to online who are interested in conversation, as opposed to random five sentence chats. Rather than merely shooting MeFi Mail to random interesting members, I thought I'd ask in the form of a question, so that people could point out other resources.
(I haven't had much luck with Craigslist, OKC, or a couple other random sites for that purpose per se.)

Awkward...

Inspector.Gadget — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:08:51 -0800

In my Gmail sidebar contacts list, a contact shows up with a greyed-out "Invited" next to their name. Does this mean that I have invited them to chat, or that they have invited me to chat? I still have the "invite to chat" option available, and I can't remember if I did send a chat invite. Thanks in advance, hivemind.

ChatFilter

jacquilynne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:34:17 -0800

Can you help me find a solution for my chatting needs? I need a private chatroom for a smallish group of people to use on an irregular basis. It needs to be:

-- Actually a chat room. It needs to just be there so people can pop in and out, it can't be an invite based, on the fly thing.
-- Private. It shouldn't be listed in directories, and there should be a password to keep the riffraff out.
-- Easy to set up for both me and the users. Preferably it is just a website that I can configure for a private room, but we can install something if we absolutely have to.
-- Stable both in terms of its own uptime and individual connectivity.
-- Mac-friendly, but not Mac-only.
-- Free. This last bit is somewhat optional. But free would dramatically be preferred.

Things we've tried and rejected:
-- Group Chats via our IM clients (we use AIM as our network on various clients Audium, Trillian, etc). This is rejected because it's not permanent, and because we have a lot of trouble actually getting invitations to work with some people's chat clients.
-- Meebo. This showed promise, but we have a lot of trouble with the way that it handles links, and the fact that if you exceed the line length, it simply fails to send the message without even creating an error, so you have no idea it didn't go through. It also seems to kick people out unexpectedly.
-- PHPFreeChat. Big stability issues in terms of keeping some key people in the chat for any length of time. Plus, it would show logged out people as logged in, and not show people who were logged in. Very strange, very not good.
-- Campfire. I was aiming for Campfire via Basecamp, but it seems like in Basecamp, if the owner of the Campfire account isn't logged in, the chat room disappears. If they log in directly to Campfire then it appears, it seems, though. The main problem with Campfire is the cost. Their free alternative isn't sufficient for our needs because of the 4 chatter limit -- I'd prefer a free alternative if I can find one. This is my current best prospect, though.

2 Domain, 2 Server Redundancy with Jabber/XMPP?

d7415 — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:50:46 -0800

I'm looking to set up an XMPP/Jabber server with minimum hassle, with one major requirement: I want to run the service for 2 domains across two servers, each acting as backup/redundancy for the other. Ideally, I'd also like an easy admin interface and transports to other Major IM networks (e.g. MSN).

Thanks for any help.

What business Live Chat software works well?

Chuck Cheeze — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:36:32 -0800

I have a client who wants to add live chat to their company website, for customer support. What are your experiences with some of the software packages out there? I know LivePerson is the most pervasive, but what other packages can provide a solid, customizable solution?

Some things we want in this software:
* Install on PCs at client location
* Auto notification of operators (maybe lives in the tray)
* Customizable button for site, to mimic look and feel

I'm sure many of these are common features.

Help me and my friends keep broadcasting!

Citrus — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:45:30 -0800

So, what's a good replacement service for Yahoo Live? Yahoo announced yesterday that they're pulling the plug on Yahoo Live. Is there a similar service out there that Yahoo Live users can jump to?

What's the best online group chat solution?

jmprice — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:42:24 -0800

What's the best moderated group chat solution to accomodate newspaper website readers and thinktank experts? My company is looking to help a prominent Washington thinktank partner with a major media website and have live Q&A chats on the latter's site.

Has anyone had a great experience with a third party moderated group chat solution?

Our basic (and ideal requirements)
- consistent and precreated page URL before chat
- opportunity to submit questions early
- if a static page (a la Washington Post Chat), automatic refresh
- only moderated questions appear
- sophisticated and minimalist or skinnable embeddable chat window

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

How do I log my chat hours?

inactivist — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:31:03 -0800

How do I log the hours I'm logged in to Google chat? I'd like to know when I'm logged in to Google chat, for records. Is there any software that can keep a log for me? (I use Adium on a Mac.)

Gmail chat problem

ootsocsid — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:39:47 -0800

What is wrong with my Gmail chat? For the last couple of days, I have been unable to use Gmail chat. If someone sends me a message I receive it, but if I reply, all they see is that "ootsocsid is typing..." and my message does not show up in their chat box. My messages do end up in the saved chat log for both of us though.

I've had the same problem chatting with multiple people. The problem occurs in both Firefox 3.0 and IE 7.0 (and reinstalling Firefox 3.0 did not help). Turning off my Firewall and virus software also did not help. Neither did installing Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1. Strangest of all, if I log into another Gmail account on the same computer and in the same browser, the problem goes away and Gmail chat works fine for that other account.

Quick, easy group chat with Facebook integration

Skwirl — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:02:26 -0800

What is the most user friendly and computer accessible way to set up group chat for a Facebook group? There is a group of conference attendees that I'd like to stay in touch with, share best practices and moral support. Currently we have a Facebook group, but it would be cool to integrate and schedule group chat sessions. To my knowledge, Facebook's standard chat doesn't allow group chat.

Is there a simple way to accomplish this? Can you add Facebook apps to group pages, or would it have to be a separate link or an app on a particular users' page?

What's the most widely used, most accessible or most user friendly app for this? Few headaches on the user's end means more people will use it and it will be more sustainable.

I see articles about Meebo Rooms integration in Facebook, and I've seen at least one Facebook Game App uses Meebo Rooms. Meebo Rooms seems nice because it would link Facebook users' accounts to the service on one hand, but still allow non-Facebook users to chat via other protocols, if I understand Meebo's MO. But, I don't see any clear way of setting it up short of integrating it into my own custom Facebook app. I can code, but learning a new API and finding hosting just to reinvent the wheel sounds not-so-fun.

AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo and all are nice, but everyone is likely to have a different favorite and, since these discussions might take place from work, I have to assume some users' computers are locked down to new software.

Can an email group be a chat group for some, and an announce-only group for others?

ManInSuit — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:11:17 -0800

Is there a way to make an email list announce-only for some recipients and unmoderated for others? Lots of things in my life involve organizing email lists where I occasionally send announcements to small groups of subscribers (10-75 people, say).

My guess is that some people on these lists would like to be able to reply and chat with other recipients, and some people would like to just get the announcements.

I wonder if there's some way to arrange this? I can see how a service like google groups could offer this. As a group subscriber, you could choose to receive only messages from the moderator, or you could choose to receive all messages sent to the list address.

Do you know if there's a way to do this? A mailing-group service that supports this option?

I don't think having separate "announce" and "chat" lists will do what I want. It seems like too much thinking. I'd like people to just be able to reply to an announcement, and know that their reply will only go to people who want to get it.

Chat room games (not cybersex)

aebaxter — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:53:28 -0800

Text-based chat room games? Some friends and I really enjoy playing a few rounds of marry-boff-kill together via a chat room. What other text-based games can we play together in a chat room? Genre and style don't matter.

Seperating voice chat and music outputs on a PC.

markkraft — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:30:54 -0800

A friend had a question I was uncertain about... is there a way on a laptop running Vista -- short of having two sound cards -- where you can have Ventrillo voice chat through any kind of headphones, while at the same time having entirely seperate streaming radio playing to speakers through the audio out port on the laptop? She's open to any kind of headphones or any streaming audio software which would support this. Failing this... is there a good, simple, ideally non-invasive workaround to add a second sound card to a laptop?

Early internet discussions?

vizsla — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:40:20 -0800

Besides Google Groups, where else can I find archives of discussions from the early days of the internet? (on any subject)

Blah, blah, blah: Help me find a website chat combined with internal chat software.

chrisfromthelc — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:50:03 -0800

I'm looking for a web chat for visitors to my company's website... ...and there are plenty out there. Here's the thing. I also would like it to be integrated with a internal chat system like Openfire Enterprise, but without the high price tag.

I potentially have 15-20 internal users (I'm including future hires in the next 2 months on that number), and it would be nice to be able to have a separate "tech support" chat and "sales information" chat that visitors could use.

A/S/...anybody, anybody?

StrikeTheViol — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:36:32 -0800

Other than #mefi, Are there any chat rooms or chat services still out there not full of spambots? I know the question was asked years back, but there seem to be very limited chat spaces and since I won't be able to go out for a bit, I thought I'd query the hivemind.

Stable, private chat rooms...

tcv — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 08:07:00 -0800

Let's say I have a small group of people -- 10 and under -- and I want to provide a stable, private chat room that participants can enter and exit at will. Let's further say that I would want whatever software that provides this to account for different technical skills (no command-prompts) and when everyone leaves the room it isn't taken down needing to be recreated again in the future? Proprietary software is fine. For Profit software is fine. (Free is better!! ;-)

Video chat help

bernsno — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:05:16 -0800

My grandfather read a review of Oovoo last week and wants to get everyone in the fam web cams so we can chat video style. I was hoping to get some input on people's favorite webcams and chat software. My experience with video-chat thusfar has been on a macbook via ichat, however I have always preferred just using text because I can multi-task whilst chatting. Video conferencing does seem like a nice way to keep in touch though, especially with family members scattered across the country. That being said I was hoping some folks could tell me a bit about their recent experiences and favorite setups.

As far as hardware goes everyone runs XP except for myself and my sister who are both on OS X (I also have a machine running feisty fawn if that helps... I imagine it does not). Also my sister and I are on that ppc tip so there will be no parallels, bootcamp, windows on my mac, etc.

I'm looking for a webcam that has its own mic [maybe the logitech quick cam 5000] and an application we can all run. I've used skype for talking to folks, but never video, and it looks like Oovoo currently runs on Windows only. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Help me find an easy & cheap way to set up chat for my forum?

tastybrains — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:54:42 -0800

I run a small, private forum for a few friends who are scattered across the US & Canada. I'm looking for easy ways to incorporate other ways for me to enable additional communication between members - whether it's a group voice chat or a chat room. I need help figuring out how to do this very easily (I was barely technical enough to install a pretty skin for my phpBB), very cheaply (preferably free), and so that it maintains a reasonable level of privacy. Can you help me figure this out? Basically, a few of us who were longtime members of a very large weight loss forum decided to split off to maintain a more private & close-knit group. To enable this, I set up a phpBB that is hosted at Dreamhost (it was a one-click install), and made it so that only members I approved could view or post messages.

I'd really like to somehow add a private chat room (not all members use an instant messaging tool), and it doesn't have to be fancy, just functional & private.

I'd also possibly like to set up some sort of voice-chat thingy if such a thing exists and is easy enough to set up.

The main purpose for either of these is to have weekly "meetings" in real time.

Do you have any suggestions? Thanks!