Hey, I was just messing with jabber chatrooms and it seems fairly easy to create a chat room with a jabber account. In fact there should be one called [log in to unmask] now. There is no password, its persistent and it is not publicly searchable. You can set other preferences from the menu and all you need is a jabber account, google talk accounts seems to get a 401 message. After some digging it looks like the sometimes work but I suspect the API changes frequently. I am using Adium (for jabber and google talk) but any jabber client i.e. Pidgin should work and you should be able to flick between google talk/jabber from the client. Feel free to join and see if its of any use? Cheers, Dug 2009/8/27 Derek Ross <[log in to unmask]> > As part of the discussion about Security - in particular not having a > private list to discuss security issues with UK Site admins (TB-Support is > public) it was suggested to set up a chat room, after Jeremy left a few of > us hung around and discussed this in the evo chat window, I've pasted the > relevant part of the log below to get opinions from others on the TB-Support > list. > > Derek > > > [12:14:05] Winnie Lacesso - I would prefer EVO meetings myself not IRC > chat... > [12:14:12] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think it might be useful, but IIRC when it's > come up before various sites firewall IRC pretty badly. > [12:14:33] Stephen Burke - irc used to be banned at RAL, not sure about the > current status > [12:14:35] Sam Skipsey - And, indeed, other chat systems - jabber, Skype > chat, etc. > [12:14:51] Ewan Mac Mahon - The external logging concern goes for EVO as > well. > [12:15:22] Rob Fay - it's not that hard to run an irc server, and 24/7 live > chat can be useful... if people use it > [12:15:47] Dug McNab - it needs to be something the tier1 can use, so > whatever is allowed there would be the way to go > [12:16:22] Peter Love - sign up for google-wave > [12:16:54] Rob Fay - google wave might be a solution, but not yet > [12:17:45] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think if we;re setting up something ourselves > I'd go for jabber rather than IRC, > [12:18:55] Derek Ross - problems is that may only fix the problem for one > site - would other sites be happy about using a service hosted at another > univeristy to discuss internal security issues? > [12:19:19] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think EVO is supposed to be able to do > jabber-y things like presence notification etc. but I've never tried to use > it like that. > [12:19:36] Rob Fay - Derek, if they're not, nothing will work > [12:19:47] Duncan Rand - well maybe a 'not for security issues' to start > with > [12:19:56] Sam Skipsey - Why use EVO, though, since Jabber already solves > those problems? > [12:20:15] Christopher Walker - I'm not familiar with jabber. How does it > differ > [12:20:23] Christopher Walker - from IRC > [12:20:27] Rob Fay - argument for evo: everyone already uses it, argument > against evo: jabber can be run by us with the advantages that entails > [12:20:38] Rob Fay - whereas evo can't AFAIK > [12:20:41] Derek Ross - evo is quite resource intensive > [12:20:46] Ewan Mac Mahon- Well, we do sort-of all use EVO already as > well, and it does have the possibility of turning a chat into an audo > conversation. > [12:21:09] Sam Skipsey - EVO is used by use because people keep scheduling > meetings on it, not because it necessarily solves the problem we want to > solve. > [12:21:14] Rob Fay - audio is overrated, at least with text you can't hear > the other people in graeme's office typing > [12:21:19] Ewan Mac Mahon - Plus, AIUI it's trickier to get jabber to do > chat rooms, it's more one-to-one. > [12:21:43] Ewan Mac Mahon - I know it /can/ do multi-user, I'm just not > sure how to do it. > [12:21:45] Derek Ross - can be done its not that hard - the Tier 1 has one > [12:21:51] Sam Skipsey - Jabber does do chat rooms, it's not too hard. > [12:21:54] Derek Ross - we use conference.jabber.org > [12:22:02] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think it needs setting up on the server > though, doesn't it. > [12:22:08] Sam Skipsey - Yes. > [12:22:13] Derek Ross - Pidgin (a jaber client) seems well set up to use > them > [12:22:16] Christopher Walker - What we want - or to be more precise, what > I want is a way of saying - hmm I've got this problem anyone have the same > problem, or have anyideas. > [12:22:22] Ewan Mac Mahon - You can't just /join #newchannel like you can > on IRC. > [12:22:33] Rob Fay - http://www.jabber.org/index.php/faq/#chatrooms > [12:22:43] Sam Skipsey - However, IRC is horribly insecure, Ewan. > [12:23:00] Derek Ross - true its hard to split off for small sub > discussions with jabber unles they are 1-1 > [12:23:38] Ewan Mac Mahon - Sam: It's unencrypted, but (unless you're using > something like OTR) so is jabber. How's IRC any worse? > [12:23:39] Sam Skipsey - And, according to Rob's link, it is quite possible > to do IRC style "#newchannel" conference creation in RJabber. -- ScotGrid, Room 481, Kelvin Building, University of Glasgow tel: +44(0)141 330 6439