an alternative to skype-chat

[Brendan Humphreys]

In response to the bitching about skype-chat, I've gone ahead and set
up a different chat server for atlascampers to use. The app, called
teaparty, is a little thing we wrote that we use internally to keep
team members talking to each other across different locations.

Think of it as IRC-lite over instant messaging. It has the advantage
that you only need to run your normal chat proggie to access it.

to join the chat:

1. add a gtalk contact "atla...@gmail.com" to your chat client.
2. send the IM message "atlascamp" to atla...@gmail.com (this is the
password of entry)
3. viola! you should be joined to the group chat. type "/help" for
more options

Let me know your thoughts.

Cheers,
-Brendan

[Guy Fraser]

Seems to work but nobody online...

[Igor Sereda (JIRA Client)]

Just joined. What's the difference between /shout and ordinary
message?

And... should we expect another product from Atlassian for
communications? ;)

- Igor

On Nov 12, 7:27 am, Brendan Humphreys <brendan....@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Richard Wallace]

In response to complaints from several people that were on Brendan's alternative to skype, I've gone ahead and had a Jabber chat room created.  To join

1. Add a new chat in your IM client
2. The room is "atlascamp"
3. The server is conference.chat.atlassian.com
4. The password is "atlascamp"

Hopefully this will prove to be a friendlier option for chatting.  But I'd love to come to some kind of group consensus.

Rich

[Graham Bakay]

I think an XMPP/Jabber server is pretty ubiquitous. Moreso than IRC, although I'm fine with either.

(PS: is anyone else having trouble connecting with Pidgin? I can't seem to get the settings right. Username, Domain, Resource, Password, Server, others?)
g.

[Brendan Humphreys]

Well the Teaparty experiment went well!

In defence of Teaparty, someone (Hi BrendanP!) started sending OTR to
it - a form of encryption for IM - and Teaparty doesn't support OTR.
Why the client persisted I don't know. It was a bit of a first, and
the resulting firestorm of base64 was certainly entertaining to wake
up to.

We run Teaparty instances for many teams and have done for years,
without incident.

The reasons we don't use Jabber chat rooms:
1. you can't connect to them via GTalk (atleast the rooms hosted on
the Atlassian jabber server).
2. up until recently, the stability of the Atlassian jabber server
was a major problem
3. up unitl recently, it was difficult to preserve a room connection
in IM clients

The reason we don't use IRC is that several popular clients don't
support IRC connections, meaning a separate client to configure and
running. It's also nigh on impossible to come across an IRC client
when you are on the road using someone elses machine.Having a chat
room over IM is nice for that reason.

-Brendan

[Richard Wallace]

If we can figure out/fix the OTR problem I wouldn't mind going back to using Teaparty.  As long as the anti-IRC types don't have a problem with that. ;)

Rich

[Brendan Patterson]

Ack. Apologies that my client spammed Teaparty with encryption
requests and a flood of garbage. I'm using Adium 1.3.2. If I'm the
only trouble maker feel free to go back to that and I can find another
client to connect.

Brendan

[David Peterson]

Hmm. I'm also using Adium...not sure if I killed it too. It was set to 'Encrypt when requested', but it's possible that other handshake stuff was going on....

David

[raju....@gmail.com]

Is there any recommended IM client for Windows?

thanks,
Rajendra

[Guy Fraser]

Brendan Patterson wrote:
> Ack. Apologies that my client spammed Teaparty with encryption
> requests and a flood of garbage. I'm using Adium 1.3.2. If I'm the
> only trouble maker feel free to go back to that and I can find another
> client to connect.

My client is set up to use encryption as well, on all accounts. I'm not
sure if it can be turned off on one account? We've been using a jabber
chat room at Adaptavist for a month or two - it works fine and you can
stay subscribed to it, but you need to open it manually (at least in
Adium) before you start seeing messages.

Guy

[Guy Fraser]

raju....@gmail.com wrote:
> Is there any recommended IM client for Windows?

Digsby is awesome, but it doesn't handle jabber chats. Pidgin is another
good Windows client.

Guy

[Raju Kadam]

Thanks Guy

[Brendan Humphreys]

At the risk of another firestorm of fail, I've restarted the teaparty
server, this time with added code to reject OTR messages. This should
force clients to degrade to plain text.

Instructions again, to join the chat:

1. add a gtalk contact "atla...@gmail.com" to your chat client.
2. send the IM message "atlascamp" to atla...@gmail.com (this is the
password of entry)
3. viola! you should be joined to the group chat. type "/help" for
more options

teaparty has a small bunch of commands, type "/help" to see em. if
that doesn't work, try a leading space before the slash.

Cheers,
-Brendan

[David Peterson]

For the record, I like the concept - much more direct that a chat room which you may or may not enter, and I have my IM on all the time, so it's easy to keep connected.

Where's the source code for teaparty?

David

[Richard Wallace]

I don't know about the source for Teaparty, maybe Brendan can throw it up on stac.  But doing a search 'gtalk chat room' came up with PartyChat <http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/09/chat-rooms-for-google-talk.html>.  The source is available on sf.  But I'd bet what the Cenquans did is higher quality ;).

Rich