July 17, 2010

I get a lot of questions by email. Sometimes for tech support I've used Yahoo Messenger chat. A problem with that is, people who don't already use Messenger have to download the software, set up an account, etc., and not everyone wants to do that. So, I decided it would be useful to have a custom web-based chat that would be easy to use for anyone who is online. The result is H-Pi Live Chat, a reasonably robust chat client I developed from a bare-bones open source chat project aptly named microchat.

At the login screen, you'll find one of three greetings:

1. I'm online and available to chat
2. I'm online, but I'm helping someone else
3. I'm offline, but you can login anyway if you like

Live Chat allows any number of people to login, so it's actually a chat room that can be used for conferencing. As the owner, I can lock out new logins at any time. Also, logins are announced, so there's no a danger of a lurker listening in covertly. So, for example, if you are in a band of four members called The Four Tuning Geeks, and you all want to chat, we can all login, I can lock it, and we can have a semi-private conversation.

I say "semi-private", because the chat connection is unencrypted, open and public. If someone really wanted to eavesdrop, they could find a way to do it. Since I imagine you are probably not in the habit of shouting out your credit card numbers when discussing tuning issues, I think we're all pretty safe.