Olark (YC S09) Is A Dead Simple Chat Widget For Site Owners(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Olark (YC S09) Is A Dead Simple Chat Widget For Site Owners
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/19/olark-is-a-dead-simple-chat-widget-for-site-owners/
11 comments
It's ready for iPhone chat out of the box? K, this is exactly what I've been waiting for.
I understand there are other developer-friendly chat services out there, but for a 'content guy' like me this is a dream. Not the first time a Y Combinator startup has empowered the everyday schmo to do business better. I truly appreciate YC and the companies it funds for that.
I understand there are other developer-friendly chat services out there, but for a 'content guy' like me this is a dream. Not the first time a Y Combinator startup has empowered the everyday schmo to do business better. I truly appreciate YC and the companies it funds for that.
Clean. Seemingly lightweight.
Using Chrome I had some issues with the resize handle of the input field. I could drag it to the right, out of the container, and off my screen where it became lost forever.
Also, I know that Chrome adds the resize handle itself, but having it on the lower right of the input text box is pretty counter-intuitive when you have about 15 pixels range for the cursor to control the height of the box.
Overall, though, well done. It looks like the Google Talk widget in GMail. That's a good thing.
Using Chrome I had some issues with the resize handle of the input field. I could drag it to the right, out of the container, and off my screen where it became lost forever.
Also, I know that Chrome adds the resize handle itself, but having it on the lower right of the input text box is pretty counter-intuitive when you have about 15 pixels range for the cursor to control the height of the box.
Overall, though, well done. It looks like the Google Talk widget in GMail. That's a good thing.
I rolled my own chat widget for my website in a day. It was super easy using just javascript.
The feedback button on the olark homepage directs to a getsatisfaction page set up under their previous domain name, hab.la.
Aside from this, anyone else like the name hab.la much better than olark?
Aside from this, anyone else like the name hab.la much better than olark?
I'd like some feedback on this to :-), it was a pretty touch decision to move from hab.la to olark.
You made the right decision. As you said in your blog, it's nearly impossible for someone to tell you the domain name (hab.la) without spelling it out. Olark.com is pretty straigtforward. This is coming from a guy who can speak limited Spanish and has a Spanish wife. ;)
we use this on our site now, and its truly awesome. just be ready to chat with lots of people depending on how traffic is on your site :-)
Seems at first glance a lot like chatterous' widget.
Great team and product. Keep up the good work!
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Compare also Talkinator on the instant/free/no-frills end:
http://talkinator.com
http://talkinator.com
I can't take any site seriously that has a banner ad across the top of two cartoon chicks making out.
Having a chat frame in your web page is really easy if you use WebSockets and can run a simple chat engine on your server (some hosting services don't allow sockets at all)
Since WebSocket is not available everywhere yet, use a Flash interface (pure actionscript, no visuals) with the same methods: onopen, onsend, onreceive, onclose, to communicate with the server. So when WebSockets is available all you have to do is replace the flash object with the real stuff.
Since WebSocket is not available everywhere yet, use a Flash interface (pure actionscript, no visuals) with the same methods: onopen, onsend, onreceive, onclose, to communicate with the server. So when WebSockets is available all you have to do is replace the flash object with the real stuff.
mychat = new WebSocket(chatserverurl);
mychat.send("Hello");
mychat.send("Can you hear me?");
mychat.send("Am I getting through to you");
We've used Strophe to implement a pure-javascript/html chat like this (with an XMPP server on the other end, and jetty handling proxying of non-blocking asynchronous comet long-polling requests to the XMPP server).
XMPP supports this natively via its HTTP binding specification, and there are free open source servers such as openfire that will work with Strophe out of the box.
http://code.stanziq.com/strophe/ http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp
XMPP supports this natively via its HTTP binding specification, and there are free open source servers such as openfire that will work with Strophe out of the box.
http://code.stanziq.com/strophe/ http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp
I want custom branding but I don't need 10+ operators & 150+ simultaneous users.
I hope they would revise their plan offering.