Word: chatscan
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...that's why of the 16 people listed in the fun-peers.30s section, only two were actually typing, including someone with the handle BOD2DIE4, who wrote, "No one is talking to me," and someone called YORKIETHE1ST, who asked, "Is everyone asleep in here?" Then I discovered that while Chatscan scours all those chat rooms, only 100 appear onscreen at any given time because the program eliminates rooms in which fewer than three people are talking. No wonder such broad categories as entertainment were bringing up just a handful of rooms on, say, The Simpsons, X-Files and South Park...
...when I first laid eyes on a new service called Chatscan, which allows you to search more than 1,000 Internet chat rooms in a slick, easy way, I was impressed. I liked the fact that it worked right within your Web browser (at chatscan.com) And I loved the idea of tapping into Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the underground chat arena most Web users never see because it requires downloading special software and learning a set of obscure commands. Even better, Chatscan let me type in a search term to locate quickly all the chat rooms in which a topic...
...last Wednesday, when the site launched, my visions of heated arguments about Tolstoy and deep discussions of Christianity faded fast. First, I learned that Chatscan doesn't work on Macs or behind most corporate firewalls. Then I found out that while Chatscan does indeed make finding online conversations easier, the quality of the talk hasn't improved much since I gave up on chatting a few years...
Still, I have a soft spot for Chatscan. It has the right idea in bringing chat into the mainstream. Now it needs to focus on quality. There should be a bookmark feature for saving your favorite chat rooms. And there should be a listing of popular rooms for each day or hour, so people don't waste time wandering from room to room. Lastly, Chatscan should list all chats with celebs, politicians and writers on popular websites. Until then, I'll stick to the phone and water cooler for my chatting needs...
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