Non IRC based live chat for collaboration?

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On May 5, 2010, at 10:37 AM, 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)

It's not free (in either sense), but 37 Signals's CampFire does exactly what you need.

http://campfirenow.com/

Deirdre