Another Blog Chat?
Sure! Why not? I just set up a dedicated chat room for this blog using Lingr, come by and yammer if you want - you can also just jump in to leave immediate feedback if you like since the messages are archived it's sort of like a quick comment system. Erik just said to me via IM that he wonders how long this one will last since I've had at least 10 different ones over the years... Very true. Well if it's useful, I'll keep it around. If not, I won't...
I actually like Lingr a lot. It's free, which is nice considering how much something like CampfireNow costs, I got my own dedicated "room" with a decent URL, it has an alert system and an open API, and it also archives conversations so I won't miss stuff. And finally, it's nothing but HTML and Ajax (Comet actually) so it works just about everywhere. I wish there was a widget I could add to the sidebar, but it doesn't seem like there is. But I have downloaded the Firefox plugin which alerts me to conversations - so if I'm online and you happen to stop in to the chat, I'll be alerted.
A cool thing they could add is Jabber integration - wouldn't it rock to be able to get to it via a Jabber MUC room? Or even being able to add a "echo" bot to my contacts like "russellbeattie@lingr.com" which would tell me when people were talking? Maybe I'll use their API and whip something like that up myself... something like "chat@russellbeattie.com" and it would echo everything that was said in the chat. I'll have to mess with it. Honestly, the best thing about Skype chat is their persistent chat rooms - which work so well - they're less like "rooms" and more like groups, where your messages are sent to everyone in the room all the time. No need to invite every time, etc. Lingr could easily do that sort of thing, but for Jabber users instead.
See you in the chat!
-Russ