How I Spent my Summer Vacation
OK, well, I didn’t have much of a summer vacation this year, so I’m borrowing the title from those silly back-to-school essays we used to have to write, but I would like to tell you what I’ve been working on because I think some of you might find it quite useful.
Babbledog is a chat and instant message client that sits in Firefox and Internet Explorer. While you surf the Web, it recommends chats to you based on where you go. Because it coordinates with your browser, we emphasize the ability to add links to chats and connect chats to Web sites. That way, when someone navigates to a particular Web site, they get a recommendation for that chat.
We envision that people who frequently like to surf the Web, chat, and recommend sites to others or talk about Web sites will find it particularly useful. Librarians, for example, could set up a chat room for their library and attach it to the library’s Web site, then use it to share resources with library users and site visitors. The widget allows site owners to post a window into a chat on Web site. There’s an event system, too, so people can schedule gatherings in a Babbledog chat at a specific time. A librarian could have an online chat to give a demonstration of the online catalog, a database, the intranet, etc. Corporate librarians can use a chat room to reach coworkers around the globe. You get the idea.
We opened it up to the public a few weeks ago. If any of you have a particular username you’d like or have always wanted to be the first Amy or Jessamyn or Gary in a chat system, now’s your chance to snag it before someone else does.
You can usually find me in the babbledog chat. That’s a good starting place, especially if you have questions or comments about Babbledog. There are also chats for: news librarianship, blog group, SLA, j’s scratchpad, many more topics, and whatever you choose to create.
Addendum 9/12: Shimon wrote about Babbledog, too.
