Chatterous (YC W08) launches im/email/sms group API and widgets.
chatterous.wordpress.comIf you want to have the HN chatroom always at your side when browsing HN... go grab the GreaseMonkey HN toolkit, then copy paste this code at the end of the file, but inside the last IF clause. No warranties expressed or implied. :-)
var center = document.getElementsByTagName('center')[0];
var tbl = document.getElementsByTagName('table')[0];
tbl.setAttribute('width','100%');
var chat = "<iframe width='100%' height='" + ( window.innerHeight - 20 )
+ "px' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' marginheight='0' marginwidth='0' "
+ "allowtransparency='true' src='http://chatterous.com/hnyc/embed/?"
+ "bgcolor=FFF0DA&titlecolor=FF7800&linecolor=FFB547'></iframe>";
center.innerHTML = "<table width='85%' cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0"
+ " border=0><tr><td valign='top' width='60%'>" + center.innerHTML
+ "</td><td valign='top' width='40%'>" + chat + "</td></tr></table>";
Chatterous has become essential for us really. Feels almost like a "utility" at this point. Keep up the great work, guys.
We've been playing with the API-- at the moment we're using it to send SVN commit notices and production code releases to our team. Seems cool so far.
I don't know why we hadn't done this yet - but I am now sending svn commit notices, website errors, and all of our other msgs to a Chatterous group.
It took 5 minutes, and is super handy.
Chatterous looks cool enough. But I'm sorry, as soon as I clicked through and saw the default (Kubrick) Wordpress theme, I killed a kitten.
Think of all the features they pumped out instead of making a fancy looking blog.
Chatterous is really cool. I don't mind the blog layout, form follows function. What I do much mind is lack of a link to chatterous.com from the blog. So annoying.
It might just be me, but it disappoints me a bit to see startups put blogs as a sub-domain of WordPress.com. (WordPress itself is great, but it's much better to use a sub-domain or sub-folder of the primary domain -- for controlling the SEO).
So, I'd advise: blog.chatterous.com or chatterous.com/blog
It's not that expensive to do (even if you want to host at WordPress.com). Should be standard practice for all YC startups.
The value of public embeddable chats, at least to me, is the ability to participate without having to sign in for anything. Meebome works extremely well for this.
A possible application to look into is integration with BlackBerry Messenger. It is very powerful and would seem more appropriate for a chat session than over SMS.
Good luck.
Yikes, Meebo Rooms is a UX disaster though. I tried using it on our 'maintenance page' once when we were upgrading our servers, and it was a visual design abortion.
Definitely psyched about using Chatterous in the future.
Also, Campfire, watch out.
The real use of chatterous though, for me, is the private or semi-private groups.
I use them on personal and work project groups now (via Gtalk.. when it works ;)) and it up productivity no end.
The way I see chatterous is like a modern, web based form of IRC. Very little else has come close to that before :)
>> "have switched our javascript/web clients from polling to comet long-polling"
Congrats :) Very cool updates!
Congratulations Kenshi and Wilkins!
All I want is IRC compatibility.
w00t!!! Chatterous FTW