Chat me up baby... Module2 Chat Task

I have been using chat for a long time but I have really found the benefits of it greatly expand for me over the past few years with it's work uses. Here is a summary of the chat tools I use often and the applications I employ with them:

• Skype is definitely the best thing since sliced bread for me. It makes my job a lot easier and certainly more flexible because I have the ability to work from home and communicate with my colleagues and boss cheaply and quickly. I do use it for personal chats with friends but not nearly as often now as I used to. The video and voice options I tend to reserve for use with family and friends because I really have no need to see my colleagues in the office and most of the time they don't have speakers, camera or microphone. I did a chat with a few folks from net11 on chat and found that we mainly had small talk. One thing I find annoying with all types of synchronous text chat is the long pauses caused by folks writing long chat messages with two finger typing.... ARRRRGH. (fortunately, this was not something I experienced with the chat I had with net11 folks)

• Facebook has a chat function which I use for catching up with friends and often e-learning colleagues as well. It is usually a ten minute quick chat. The functionality of the facebook chat is limited; I am yet to find a way to include multiple chat members; people who are offline often appear online and vice versa; messages often take a long time to come through. This article about other uses of facebook chat has given me some ideas and I guess I probably am not using it to it's full potential.

• Ning has the ability to put a chat function in it but to be honest, I think it is pretty rubbish. There doesn't seem to be any audible indication of an incoming message and chats seem to stay there for days... in hindsight I might take it away from the ning I have set up. This forum discussion on a ning website I am a part of reflects some of the problems I have experienced in the past with ning chat.

• Twitter, though not a synchronous communication chat method as such, has proved to be a very good way for me to have "chats". Though you often have to wait for a long time (maybe a whole day) the responses you get seem to be measured (usually) and thoughtful because they are public record (if you use the @reply as opposed to the DM direct message). For me the fantastic opportunity that you get with twitter which you don't with many other methods is the access to contemporaries all around the world who you otherwise would never have had access to. I have managed to have a few impromptu quick twitter chats with some of the net11 folks and these have added to the connections we have experienced in the forums.

I know these chat methods are probably not the most popular or even the most effective but they are the ones that I use and those are my reflections on them. Should I try something else? well I have used MSN, ICQ and others in the past but this is what I currently play with.I have found that the asynchronous discussions occurring in the webct forums, on blogs and other web2.0 tools to be more akin to my optimum communication style.... but I like to play with all sorts of stuff so I reckon I will be playing with another tool that is bigger and better at some stage down the track and I'll let you know how that goes too ;)