Non IRC based live chat for collaboration?

[Rowan Littell]

I suspect Google has something along those lines; I have not
really checked.  Where I work, we use jabber (specifically Openfire -
www.igniterealtime.org), and while the default mode for that is one-to-one
instant messaging, you can very easily create chat rooms for multiple
people to hang out in (and you can set room permissions, history, etc.).
Openfire in particular is very easy to install and set up, and other
servers are also pretty straightforward.

   --rowan

On Wed, 5 May 2010, Nicole wrote:

> Hello
> I work for a company where there really is no office. Everyone works at home 
> and we have many people in various countries.
> We have been communicating via skype chat, a bug tracker like custom 
> ticketing system, and email. However doing this makes it hard to create a way 
> for people working on the same projects but in different areas to stay on top 
> of what is being done at the moment.(bill chats with bob about what they are 
> doing but henry and jane who also work on the same project have no idea 
> unless then everything is then sent to them)  We have used IRC in the past as 
> an instant publishing system of what people are working on etc. As long as 
> you stayed logged into the channel, you could scroll back and see what people 
> were talking about. Everyone could stay connected to what was going on. 
> However, management was not a fan of having things like this out on IRC, even 
> if it's a private channel.
>
> So might anyone be able to recommend an alternative live chat type of system 
> where people can freely sign in and out of.  (for instance we cannot use 
> skype conference as they have to be invited in)  Would prefer something open 
> sourced we would install or some free service.  (does Google maybe have 
> anything like that,. they seem to have everything)
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Nicole
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