Chat Groups

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and it allows people all over the world to get together for real-time conversations. IRC had actually been around for many years before the Web started, and was always one of the most-used aspects of the internet. There are many ChatRooms that may be accessed directly from web pages these days.

Besides the traditional text-based chat clients, there are now a number of Avatar-based and VRML chat environments available. They take up a larger footprint on your hard-drive and in RAM than text-based IRC clients, but they do a lot more. The Avatar clients allow you to assign an image file to represent you in the chatrooms, and you see the images of the other people you are chatting with, adding an extra dimension to the conversations. In a VRML chat client, you get a full 3D environment to wander around in, with complexity of the rooms limited only by the skill and imagination of the person who built that room. Both Avatar and VRML programs give you sound and animation functions as well.

ChatRooms have 2 main draws that cause folk to visit them. The first is that most ChatRooms are on a specific subject, and you know the people you will meet there are interested in that topic, with hints, tips, tricks, or questions to share. For the ChatRoom linked here, my subject is the Web and how to get the most out of it!

The second draw follows the first; most ChatRooms have a meeting time, so you know that every Friday at 8PM EST (as an example) you can login and find a whole lot of other people interested in the same thing.

Excites SuperChat is one of the places I hang out, with Avatar-based chat rooms and a thousand folks online at any given time to meet up with! Hit this link to download the software right for your system, and join in soon!

A full 3D VRML (Virtual Reality) chat environment, with more features than I have room to list here!

A full 3D VRML (Virtual Reality) chat environment, with more features than I have room to list here!

iCHAT
With iCHAT the IRC client is melded into your Web Browser for seamless browsing and chatting! They use an ActiveX plugin for the MSIE browser, with Plugin support for Netscape. They are now a commercial operation only, and no longer involved with building the true Open Web.