Gtalk gets meebo like chat widget Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Google have released a Gtalk chat widget that you can post onto any web page, which allows visitors to chat with you whenever you are logged into your gmail account. I've embedded it onto this blog on the left above the meebo widget.
Whilst it's not as slick as Meebo's widget [little customisation available and the visitor chats in a pop-up window, assuming they allow pop-ups in their browser], it works fine. Perhaps this is the start of Google edging into Meebo's space.
AFTERTHOUGHT
I also realised that the Gtalk widget doesn't provide a presence indicator unlike Meebome ie. meebome tells me if there are visitors on the page in real-time and provides me with the chance to initiate a chat, whereas the Gtalk widget only lets me respond to visitors if they start the chat.
Labels: Google, gtalk, Meebo, meebome
posted by John Wilson @ 4:45 PM Permanent Link
,
newsvine
reddit
Meebo Rooms rock Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Many of the blogs I read were crammed with post about the release by meebo of Meebo Rooms. At first, I simply thought "whatever", another open chat room like Gabbly.
But after opening up Meebo, and finding myself with my own Room automatically alongside the site rejig, I thought I'd take a look.
Unlike traditional chatrooms however, they've enabled you to create a room, add it to you buddylist in meebo (to receive notifications even when you're not in the room), and embed that chat room on website, blogs and social network profile pages, just like you can with meebome. Moreover, you can even embed a room widget into a blogpost and it will show up in RSS readers (or at least it did in Google Reader), which means that you could run the comments section in a chat box and people can then subscribe to that blogpost room, which will make it far more interactive.
They've also incorporated the ability to watch online videos with others in real-time. So, insert a youtube or viddler video url into the room and you can watch it with others. On meebo rooms already they've got music artist themed rooms e.g. Lily Allen with her music videos, which you can join and participate in watching the content and chatting in real-time about. This would be amazing for live streaming content, as an online audience could easily form and chat at the virtual event.
Sadly, after only a few hours of being live, its already evident that Meebo may have released an uncontrollable "beast", since access to the rooms is open and unmoderated. Consequently some of the chat posts on "brand name" rooms are offensive in nature, together with the videos and photos that have been shared. Whilst such content can be reported to meebo and immediately disappear from your own view, the policing job is going to be substantial if people are not to be immediately deterred from visiting the rooms. Not sure how they will handle this.
Still, it's definitely worth a look and I may embed some of the rooms in future posts.
posted by John Wilson @ 3:03 PM Permanent Link
,
newsvine
reddit
RadiusIM - the social IM Sunday, May 13, 2007
For a while I'd like the concept behind Buddyping, which enabled people to publish their location easily and hence allow their friends & acquaintances to quickly see where people were. You could update your location via an LBS query (determined where you were from your mobile phone location), via SMS update or via a web page.
Unfortunately, it was a pain to have to remember to update it and because it didn't serve any other purpose, I quickly got out of the habit of logging into the service to update my location. Moreover, the service didn't appear to report how recent the location data was and hence it was often unreliable. The addition of free SMS messages to other buddyping friends was a nice add-on, but very few people I wanted to text were members.
Consequently, I was interested in RadiusIM which combines an IM aggregation service like (meembo and ebuddy) but with a location disclosure added in. Unfortunately this location data is only available if you are logged into RadiusIM and so ordinarily most of your "IM buddies" won't see it - nor will you see their location unless they use it too. Nonetheless, it is immediately a more useful service than Buddyping, provided it IM aggregation service is as good as others.
As I've mentioned before, I've stuck with meebo's service simply because of the meebome chat widget I've been able to embed in this blog. Whilst RadiusIM integrates with all the same IM services (yahoo, AOL, gtalk and MSN), it doesn't offer the same chat widget. These chat widgets aren't unique and I found another service recently called Mabber than also did the job and had coverage of the same IM services - unfortunately I found the site hopped between English and German language, with Jabber/Gtalk also reporting error messages.
So, I think for now I'll stick with Meebo and hope RadiusIM brings out a chat widget.
posted by John Wilson @ 3:32 PM Permanent Link
,
newsvine
reddit
Run Meebo in Firefox Sidebar Wednesday, April 11, 2007
If you read this blog on its home page rather than via an RSS reader, you may have noticed a meebome widget on the page, which enables anyone visiting to IM with me when I am online or leave a message if I am offline.
It is this widget than persuaded me to use meebo as my IM aggregator rather than any other online IM aggregator.
However, one big problem with meebo is that it doesn't operate a pop-up to let you know incoming messages have been received and you are reliant on spotting that the meebo browser tab is showing the text - browser limitation presumably.
Until today, I'd not figured out how to overcome this inconvenience. So I'm indebted to Sika at Neilson Reference Department, Smith College, Northampton MA 01063 for emailing me with this link which shows how you can run meebo in a Firefox sidebar window in the browser and thus keep it permanently in view in the browser session.
There are a couple of drawbacks.
- It does reduce the browser display size
- It doesn't resolve the situation when the browser is not your active window, but as most of my PC activities are done within the browser this is fine for me
I believe that this is a technique you can employ for other webpages too.
Labels: Meebo
posted by John Wilson @ 10:04 AM Permanent Link
,
newsvine
reddit
Kool IM takes on Meebo Monday, February 12, 2007
Albeit still in Alpha, Kool IM is almost a replica of Meebo in that it provides an aggregation service across multiple IM networks.
They already have more IM networks than Meebo as you can see from the list below.
Whilst the application is reasonably intuitive, there's no help or FAQ sections to assist in steering round the application. That said, it's a very minimalist site.
The application can be run "embedded" within a browser tab or as a "popup" on the desktop similar in appearance to most desktop based IM applications.
As yet there doesn't appear to be a meebome equivalent, which is the reason why I'll be staying with meebo for now - it's amazingly useful to be able to converse with people visiting the blog. If that's not relevant for you but you are hooked into many IM services, this may suit you.
Kool IM definitely look like a group to watch as they seem to be an innovative crew.
posted by John Wilson @ 10:14 AM Permanent Link
,
newsvine
reddit
