Non IRC based live chat for collaboration?

Fri May 7 10:38:45 PDT 2010

 Thanks everyone for the great options!
  IRC was frowned on for security but also its pain to teach to 
semi-technical folks like graphics designers etc..
 But I'm going to pitch using jabber anyway.

Will also look into Openfire.

 Google wave also seems interesting. However I need to investigate more 
the statement  "Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit 
the content and add participants at any point in the process."  Whether 
someone can at least just knock to be let in or if they have to contact 
using another means to ask to be added.

  Be most well.

  Nicole

Jim Dennis wrote:
>
>  Nicole,
>
>  You can run your own IRC server on your own hardware and accessible 
> only via VPN or ssh (tunnels).
>  Then your internal communications aren't "out there."  The advantage, 
> of course, is that there are a
>   wealth of clients, 'bots and tools for working with IRC.  Using 
> existing tools it's almost trivial to write
>   your own 'bot and other event handlers for IRC.
>
>   For example at my employer we have bots that auto-detect long URLs 
> and render them as short
>  URLs through an internal tinyURL service, others that automatically 
> log channels and provide
>  URLs for viewing the log (handy when you create an incident handling 
> channel, invite stakeholders
>  and they each ask the 'bot for the URL so they can catch up on the 
> conversation), and so on.
>  I have a simple tail -f script that watches my own logs of a 
> particular "alerts" channel so that I can
>  respond to some things automatically.  Years ago I wrote a simple 
> system to forward excerpts of
>  whispers from a particular colleague via SMS to my cell phone if I 
> was "away"  and so on.
>
>  The fact that many of the available IRC clients are curses makes it 
> easy to run them under GNU
>  screen (which makes it easy to keep them running on any 
> desktop/server and repeatedly reconnect
>  to that session from your laptop, over your VPN etc.
>
>  Your other obvious choices are SILC (http://silcnet.org/) and Jabber 
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol).
>
>  In any of these cases you can run the service on a local Linux or 
> other UNIX system and clients
>  are available for most platforms.  Any of these provides interfaces 
> for creating 'bots (for example
>  for SILC there are: PySilc (http://www.liquidx.net/pysilc/) and Samadhi
>  (http://juraj.bednar.sk/work/software/samadhi/) packages).
>
>  I'd suggest that the easiest way to set any of these up would be to 
> start with a Debian or Ubuntu
>  server (or pair of servers or even pair of VMs).  Then you can easily 
> use aptitude to fetch and
>  install whichever daemons you like (there are a number of IRC and 
> Jabber daemon alternatives
>  and the one standard silcd already in APT main).
>
>  For redundancy you might consider Google Ganeti 
> (http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/) as a simple
>  clustered VM system (also supported by Debian APT packages).  This 
> could allow you to have
>  a pair of VM instances running over a cluster of 3 or more systems 
> with quick migration of either
>  VM to any of the nodes in the cluster (quick recovery from hardware 
> issues and easy handling
>  of planned downtime for any hardware node).  Naturally it would also 
> allow you to host other
>  applications/services over the cluster in the likely case that the 
> chat service doesn't required
>  all the horsepower of a dedicated server.
>
>  As for Google (having "everything").  I think Google "Wave" 
> (http://wave.google.com/) is
>  intended to fulfill the sort of needs you're talking about.  I don't 
> know if its security model
>  would meet your requirements (or sit will with your management).  So 
> far as I know using
>  Google Wave would be "out there" in the same sense that IRC in a 
> "private" channel on
>  any of the public IRC networks is "out there."  (Depending on how 
> much trust your willing
>  to place in Google, Inc vs. the amorphous bands of people behind 
> Freenode/DALnet/etc).
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Nicole <nicole at unixgirl.com 
> <mailto:nicole at unixgirl.com>> 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
>
>

-- 
"Fundamental Christianity:  the idea that there is an all-knowing,
all-seeing, all-powerful, universe-spanning entity that for some
inexplicable reason is deeply interested in my sex life."
-- DM

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