Communication Software Poll

[Rogue4ngel]

Please choose your preferred communication method.

[Rowan]

Email.

[bascherz]

From the shape things are taking with this poll, someone is going to have to add a Skype forum profile field.

[tjay]

Are group discussions possible in Skype?

[Wendy]

Are group discussions possible in Skype?

Yep   You can add as many people as you want, and others can add in people that they have contact info for.

You can also have 'bookmarked' chats which is handy for if you are away from the computer for any length of time.  It's like an on going conversation, and you can go back and read everything you may have missed. 

[Rogue4ngel]

Well, I'd say by the popular majority at this pont, Skype looks like the clear choice, and from what I've seen at this point, it does have the features (all of them) that people might want, from chat rooms to voice chat.  I think it should work well for what we need.  We'll keep the poll open until tomorrow evening, just to give everyone a chance to vote.

[uberlandia]

I agree with Skype. My id is joaobruni.

"Deus é Amor" means "God is Love" in portuguese.

Uberlândia is the name of the city where I live in Brazil.

Hope to have time to follow 101...

I may disappear as suddenly as I appeared today in this forum. (hope not)

THANK YOU

[dartagnan32]

Ok it seems Skype will win, so my skype is xaviounet1
I guess you'll make a list later on...

[igeoffi]

How about some private forum to post the contact info in (just for team members)? We don't need the whole world to know our contact info.

[tjay]

I downloaded last night, I will set up an account

[bascherz]

Shouldn't we be discussing the names of our chat rooms or something? Does Skype have chat room moderation? Is there a way to only allow certain IDs into a chat room? If not, then we don't need to know anyone's ID, only the name(s) of the chat rooms (or whatever they call them on Skype) that we will be using. Guess I'll need to read up on how Skype supports chat rooms.

[dartagnan32]

well my understanding is that in skype you just begin to chat with someone, then you can invite others to your discussion just like msn if you know better... So that's not exactly like a chatroom, just comes whoever is invited or maybe also those who bookmarked the conversation.

[Rogue4ngel]

We were trying out the chat room today.  The real differentiation is that it displays the chat room on the top, but looks like the chat.  The nice thing about the bookmark feature, as CheifGoFor was showing me, is you can bookmark that chat, and when you return to it, you will have the archive of everything that has transpired since your last visit, even if you shut Skype down.

I happened to find out accidentally that if you run Skype on more than one computer, both computers will be updated with any chat information that has transpired at one computer or the other, so you have everything on both.  A neat little feature.

We'll have to have someone set up a chat room that we can bookmark.  Perhaps even a few.

[Rogue4ngel]

So from the vote it looks as though we'll get Skype a try as a mode of real time communication.  Please not we would like to use Skype for general discussion, but any formal discussions regarding Coding 101 at this time should be conducted in the forum to ensure everyone is aware of the current status and can participate. 

This is to give Skype a run and see how it works and get everyone connected that would like to use it.

My Skype name is ttmillard if you'd like to add me to your list.  There is also a public room created called  J!101-General.  I have it in my chat bubble on Skype if anyone has trouble finding it once they add me.  Once you are there, you can bookmark it, and you will always be up to date on the discussions.

Looking forward to chatting!

[uptownben]

Can you add a Skype public chat join button/promotion snippet somewhere in the forum?

[Rogue4ngel]

I did make an attempt, but the link wasn't working for me last night.  Let's give this a shot again.

Try this: J!101-General Skype Chat

I plan to post a 'tools' sticky and add Skype information and the chats people have set up.

[bascherz]

Tim, that link has your skypename in it, so it may not work for others. If not, maybe removing the &skypename=ttmiilard part might help. I am not at home right now, so I can't try it. Then again, I tried this last night myself and Skype created a link that it claimed could be published on a website but had MY skypename in it. Nobody was in the J!101-General topic when I tried last night, so I couldn't tell if I did it right. I had to create a public chat by that name. Not sure what would have happened if it had already been there with people active in it...perhaps it would have asked if I wanted to join the existing topic. Then I added you to my buddy list and I noticed a bookmark named J!101-General, so perhaps it did work. I haven't used Skype this way before.

[Rogue4ngel]

Yes, I'm not sure Chief and I were connected.  The rooms lists myself as the creator, so it may need my name in there.  Chief is connected right now, and I'll be in and out today.  I did add you to my buddy list so that came through ok.

This is a first time for me using a public chat in Skype as well.  I'm pretty new to it myself; never used until recently.  I didn't even realize it had a chat.. I always thought it was only voice.  Definitely a nice little program though.

[ianmac]

Anybody able to join a public chat on Linux?

So far, I've hit a dead end...

Ian

[igeoffi]

Confirmed that the Skype Chat room works. Link above.

[Chris Davenport]

Link above just gives me a progress bar that never finishes.

I have my Skype client running and can see my regular contacts.  What do you need to do to get into the group chat?

Regards,
Chris.

[matthewhayashida]

On my mac I click the link. It then asks for premission to launch Skype. Skype opens and I can chat.

What do you see under Recent Chats? IF J!101 shows up you could click that.

[dave76mc]

I had the same experience as Matthew - clicked the link and it asked to start my Skype application.

I'm not sure how I would enter the chat in future - through the bookmarked chat feature?

[ianmac]

Chris, I experienced the same thing you did.

I'm not sure it works on Linux

Ian

[brad]

Get someone to invite you to the chat perhaps?

[igeoffi]

J! 101 Skype Chat

slightly different link, same chat room

[Rogue4ngel]

Get someone to invite you to the chat perhaps?

I was thinking the same thing.  Ian, add me as a friend and I'll see if I can't drag you into the chat.

[ianmac]

I did already...  it is still pending...  I'll try again though...

Ian

[Rogue4ngel]

Well, we managed to get Ian into the public chat by adding him to the conversation, but there seems there might be a bug with the version of Skype for linux. 

Here are the listed builds that Skype has been tested on:

SuSE 9
Gentoo 1.4
Debian
Fedora Core 3/4/5 (may work with version 2 with updates)
Sun Java Desktop System Release 2
ubuntu 6.06

The client may also work with other distributions but has not been tested.


Once in a public conversation, the bookmark feature does work and you can bookmark the conversation, but initially someone will have to 'invite' you the chat.

There was some information that I could find that noted an issue with Firefox, but nothing specific to the problem.

I'll have to dig around a bit more to see what I can find.

[ianmac]

okay...  here's one for all the Linux folks...

I have kludged a script in Python that will open up the chat for you.  I have attached it to this post.

How to run:
Download the script
rename it to j101.py
chmod +x j101.py
start skype
at the shell, do: ./j101.py

Ian