Chat Who's Here

About: this feature of fastblogit.com

You now have the ability to see who is visiting your group or tag room and to chat with them.

A social network is not just people, it is people who are connected by common activities, and objects. We have endevoured to give you the kind of experience you would have by visiting a gallery and chatting with the poeple you meet there about the pictures displayed. Your can walk around the rooms here, make items, meet people that are interested in those items and chat with them about those items.

The room is very functional now, just click the "Chat Who's Here" link in the nav panel on every screen. So this domain is not only a website but also a community of people and a web site interacting with you in real time.

There are a number of things that the

has planned to enhanse your experience.

show time since last visit on each visitor (done )
use Ajax methods to refresh the screen, right now you need to click refresh to see changes.

chat window refreshes and maintains focus (done )
still need to refresh who's here list dynamically (done )

show who is currently available to chat with ( done)

show the domain name from outside visits (done )
show the search argument from some search engines (done )
when there are enough people here interacting, we can move the chat room into each and every tag and group room.
interpret wiki references in chat lines
sanatize html - html is not permitted in chat
generate selected chat logs

I call this a slightly new media. It is a chat room so closely integrated with the blogging and wiki software here that it is getting close to virtual reality

. To my knowledge I have not seen this particular combination of blogging and chatting. Please discuss it in the tag room chat-who-is-here ...

Comments

Seth says

One aspect of this is that you are not invisible when you come to our website. We watch you! Now, of course, some people are gonna flash that as evil. But others are gonna recognize it for what it is: awareness. You do not expect to walk into a cafe and be invisible, or walk into a mall and be invisible. No, you show up. Mostly people ignore you unless you exibit bizarre behavior or otherwise stand out. Well why shouldn't it be that way on the web too? What is with this obsession of being invisible?

Seth says

Mark 2006-01-03 08:01:02 2427

You might explain that that's a feature of surfing the web (;-))

Yes, but previously it has not been available to (visible to) just people surfing the web. Previously it has only been available to evil marketers in back rooms pooring over stastical reports.

Seth says

Bozo Faust 2006-01-03 09:51:30 2427

source: from chat window

another idea is for this window to propogate and for the window itself to be tagged .. so one navigates to different chats based upon tags ... but am not totally sure what data i need to record or if i already have enough

purloined from the chat window ... don't want to forget it, so am recording it here

oh i got it, you tag yourself !!! ... then each tag room is filtered to people with the same tag :)

Seth says

unknown 2006-01-03 16:33:24 2427

I don't get it, why is this not just another chat room. There are zillions of chat rooms on the web, and all of them are a waste of time.

Ok, let me spell it out for you, Mr Anonymous Geek. I'll go over it real slow and in baby steps, but pay attention.

The web is a cold place. There are not people on it. There are just web pages. But each web page is well linked to it's particular context, that is why Google searches work so well. But the pages are dead, frozen in time, not living processess even if they are generated on the fly out of a database. Oh there are web pages that people interact with, but that interaction is one-on-one and usually is a very shallow interaction.

On the other hand there are lots of chat rooms, on IRC and on the web as well. In these rooms live people interact with each other. What is missing? Why are your boored with that interaction? Because the people there are interacting in a (usually shallow) context in which you are disinterested.

What makes an interesting social network for you would be people interacting in a context in which you yourself are involved.

What we are developing here is that special combination of the deapth of context that a blog\wiki can provide and the people who come to it can interact together around the context provided in the tag rooms.

Does that answer your question?

Mark de LA says

Well said!

winnie says

Thanks

for working on that

Seth says

source: Chat Whs Is Here

seth: 08:22 am testing ajax here
seth: 09:15 I think i'll go to bed
seth: 09:34 well first let me put in times on chat log
seth: 09:49 hi winnie
winnie: 09:50 good night Seth
seth: 09:51 good night winnie
winnie: 09:51 Hi seth thot you had gone to bed
winnie: 09:52 are you going to bed?
winnie: 09:53 or are you making automatic times on the conversation
winnie: 09:54 must have gone to bed after all :)
winnie: 09:54 Cant see if you are there or not :
winnie: 09:56 Just know that you were there and what time. It would be nice to see if a person is activly on at the time

, winnie ...

is working on stuff like that

Seth says

seth 2006-01-12 13:00:59 2427

Unfortunately any image will flash on the screen. I think i will do it with just a text on yellow background that will say "available to chat". Any suggestions as to the exact text or formating?

Seth says
Ajax is expensive. When we installed the chat refresh, pages serverd in this domain jumped from thousands per day to hundreds of thousands per day. When the site gets a lot of traffic, that may be a serious problem. ... or not ?

Mark de LA says
The last I saw a demo of Ajax someone showed a grid (matrix) or records with one of the grid being updated and only that row in the screen changed. Is that useful information to you ?

Seth says
We can update the page from a matrix, but what effect are you trying to achieve. As people are always comming and going from the site, it is impossible for us to calcualte some fixed postion on the screen.

Mark de LA says
Isn't there a way to make a matrix & just flash members & not the whole page? In a way I don't see this as very useful. I guess I thought it was going to the control panel and tell me if somebody had started to chat. Currently it sorts to the top those who came in latest so we already know they are active or somebody else comes in and replaces them.

Seth says

Mark 2006-01-12 14:35:26 2427

Isn't there a way to make a matrix & just flash members & not the whole page? In a way I don't see this as very useful. I guess I thought it was going to the control panel and tell me if somebody had started to chat. Currently it sorts to the top those who came in latest so we already know they are active or somebody else comes in and replaces them.

Huh?

The highlight shows that the person is visiting the chat screen and therefore is available to see any chatting that is happening. If they access a page somewhere else at the site they will show on the top of the list, but they do you know that you are there to chat with, unless they come to the "Chat Who's Here" page.

Seth says

source: i don't know if my comment will get posted to A VC: Spying On Myself, but in any case here it is

I think there is a variation of "myware" ... let me call it "ourware". It is the devises whereby a community becomes aware of that which impinges upon it. I called myself doing a bit of innovation in that area. Now the community of fastblogit can "spy" on everyone who comes there ... can even chat with them. It is being discussed in the room chat-who-is-here. You can get to the "spy" room by clicking on the "Chat Who's Here" button in the nav bar. You will not believe the amount of information that i have gleened about how my site interfaces with the rest of the web from watching in that room.

Chat Who's Here

About: this feature of fastblogit.com

Tags

Comments

See Also