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Ask HN: What do you use for persistent chat?

4 points by cschmitt ↗ HN
We are trying to improve intergroup communication at my job. One of the ideas we have come up with is to create a persistant chat room (or channel) for the groups to chat on. Then when an issue comes up the groups all have a history of the conversation. Currently we use GTalk for chat and most of us use Adium for a chat client. The only requirement is that the chat room log has to be visible to all parties with at least 48 hours of history.

So the question is, what do you guys use for persistent chatrooms?

13 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] thread
9mit3t2m9h9a
If you use GTalk already, maybe migrating to XMPP MUC (which is the same protocol) served by, say, ejabberd could be the most straightforward way. It has log configuration (just as IRC does), but it it slightly easier to set up to push logs to clients on entering a room.

Just in case: XMPP and Jabber are the same protocol. Ejabberd is a popular XMPP server (written in Erlang, if you care about compiling from source; not hard to deploy). Google Chat uses XMPP and supports both GMail users chatting on external MUC servers and non-GMail users from another XMPP server joining GMail-hosted chats. XMPP servers usually host Multi-user conference service (aka MUC aka group chat), but it is separate enough that you could just configure MUC-only XMPP server with proper logging settings without allowing any user accounts on the server and connect via existing GMail accounts.

cschmitt
Depending on the monthly cost of outsourcing I have thought about running a jabber server. Can you setup your jabber server to pass through authentication over to gtalk?
bdr
Yes, in that you can have ejabberd call out to an arbitrary script for authentication.
9mit3t2m9h9a
In that case maybe you want to setup conference-only jabber server that doesn't allow logging in to it but hosts MUCs and manages logs.
Smotko
We use IRC and a custom bot that logs chat history and does some other cool stuff. It works surprisingly well and it's really easy and fun to add new functionality to the bot.
cschmitt
good thought.. thanks for the comment
cschmitt
Here is the simple criteria I am using: 1. Must use gtalk 2. Must have persistant history for at least 48 hours (searchable is a bonus) 3. Must be accessible from adium or other chat clients 4. Must be private for our org.

So far I have identified, Jaconda, hipchat and campfire (although I think it is out due to the lake of gtalk integration)

(Sorry for not posting this right up front)