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Cross-platform, Easy-to-Use Local LAN Chat?
Ars-Gonzo asks: "I was at a conference last week, and had a surprising number of people connected to a peer-to-peer wireless LAN during the lectures. I saw several Mac users typing away during the lectures, and I found out later that they were using iChat's Rendezvous-based local chat to talk to each other. iChat's local subnet chatting functionality is supposedly based on Jabber, but I can't get a Jabber client (on Windows or Linux) to connect to iChat, locally. Has anyone seen any iChat compatible LAN-chat apps for a platform other than Mac?"
What about the built in Windows Messenger service? All you have to do is hand out a list of computer names and you're good to go.
if that is not your style, then write a frontend for Net Send using VB and just "net send ' Response with your computer name" That's worked wonders for me on school networks in the past.
My sister got involved in this one day while she was sitting around in an office at her university.
She and her friend were both working on their laptops, and they both had iTunes opened. They were sharing their playlists, and came across a playlist with some good music (belonging to someone that I'll name GuybrushT). Clever person that she is, she changed the name of HER playlist to say 'GuybrushT is cool!'. He noticed, and she and her friend and GuybrushT had a conversation, all in their shared playlist names!
Your other alternative is, of course, to buy yourself an iBook and just give in to Apple and OS X. It's a pretty cheap way to buy an addition to your social life.
Don't listen to this guy... Linux is a cheaper way to abandon your social life!
Mods: I'm kidding. Please be gentle.