This is a fancy chat room thingy that I found on the net one day. I thought, "that might come in useful on my web site!" (For those that don't know, a chat room is a "place" where multiple people from anywhere around the world can all have a simultaneous discussion using their keyboards.) Like most private chat rooms, it will only be used at prearranged times. If you happen to be here but are not part of a prearranged chat, well, you can stay, but nothing much is going to happen. I (or Greg) will periodically send out an email suggesting a good time to meet. Feel free to use this chat room for your own purposes (if you know how).

One public chat has already happened, on June 1st, 1999. A transcript is available of the conversation, here.

To participate in the discussion, wait for the screen below to complete its loading, then fill in the blanks and click OK, Connect!

It's not obvious what some of the fields are, so here's a bit of help:

• User Name is an identifier by which other people in the chat room will know you by (like FredBloggs). Make sure there are no spaces. You can use digits. You may be asked to choose another one if that name is already being used (being used anywhere on the entire Xoom system).
• Email address is obvious, but you should probably enter a bogus one (like mickey@mouse.com) unless you want to receive advertising in the mail from them for the next 700 years.
• Real Name is obvious, and should be your actual name.
• Password is one that you make up, right now (but remember it if you ever want to use that User Name again).
• The Float button puts the chat session in a window of its own, which allows you to then maximise that window (make it larger) to see more of the chat at once.

When these are all filled in, click the OK, Connect! button, and you should get in to the room. The green list down the right hand column shows who's already in the room. Whatever you type in the one-line box along the bottom of the screen will be seen by everyone that is logged in.

Ignore all the GoTo advertising.

If you get any kind of error message, simply click the Connect! button (the top one), change one of the login parameters (usually the User Name - maybe add a couple of digits to the end (no spaces)), and try again.

Good luck! (and email me afterwards if you want a text-based copy of the conversation)...

Sorry - you can't use this thing - your browser doesn't support it. Maybe you could upgrade it and come back?