Here's what would make a chat feature truly useful for me as a triber.
First: Find a means to support as many types of chat programs as possible. Trillian supports quite a lot, and you've already got jabber set up, I imagine there's lots of possibilities. It might require that the user also have their chat program of choice active, but that's hardly a big deal, I would think.
Second: When someone signs up for Tribe (and obviously afterwards too), they should be able to configure their chat abilities and desires. They could either a) enter no info regarding their chat IDs, or b) enter chat program ID info, much as Trillian would accept. This would only apply to users who are already on each other's friends list, as tribe's user base is so broad that if someone was able to accept messages from non-friends, it would just serve as fast way for IM spammers to get your profile and start nailing you. Seems too problematic, as nice as it might be. One could always just list their chat IDs in their profile if they wanted to attract strangers to their chat abilities. Once that's done, a second dot (or modification of the dot in the corner of the profile that indicates an online user) would appear whenever a user is online who also has the same chat capabilities you have. In other words, it's not enough that we are both online and have our statuses set to allow contact, we both have to have AIM, MSN, Jabber IDs whatever. ONLY then will we see each other's special dots.
*When this special dot is clicked directly* it opens up a new dialogue window using your common programs regular interface. You can then send your message to the user. They can then deal with you as they wish, per the normal parameters of the chat programs.
Ideally, the Tribe Chat interface would be able to detect your settings on your chat programs, inculding statuses that indicate unavailability (such as invisible, ignore, etc) and leave your dot unmodified in such cases.
So essentially tribe would need to be able to detect a users chat program info/status, and convey those parameters to the profile icon periodically. It would also need to be able to send commands to the chat program when the special dot is clicked ("open new dialogue", etc.). This would require a fair amount of regular upgrades, as chat programs get updated, but hopefully not too often.
This could start small though, as a link to a special page with chat options. The page would have the logo for the program(s) supported by Tribe, which doubles as a 'download now' feature. You could then set your chat IDs on the same page, save and exit. So long as you are logged in to the service in question, Tribe detects it, and lights up your 'chat dot'.
I know that's more of a user-end experience description, but I'm not a technie so it's the best I've got.
Cheers.
First: Find a means to support as many types of chat programs as possible. Trillian supports quite a lot, and you've already got jabber set up, I imagine there's lots of possibilities. It might require that the user also have their chat program of choice active, but that's hardly a big deal, I would think.
Second: When someone signs up for Tribe (and obviously afterwards too), they should be able to configure their chat abilities and desires. They could either a) enter no info regarding their chat IDs, or b) enter chat program ID info, much as Trillian would accept. This would only apply to users who are already on each other's friends list, as tribe's user base is so broad that if someone was able to accept messages from non-friends, it would just serve as fast way for IM spammers to get your profile and start nailing you. Seems too problematic, as nice as it might be. One could always just list their chat IDs in their profile if they wanted to attract strangers to their chat abilities. Once that's done, a second dot (or modification of the dot in the corner of the profile that indicates an online user) would appear whenever a user is online who also has the same chat capabilities you have. In other words, it's not enough that we are both online and have our statuses set to allow contact, we both have to have AIM, MSN, Jabber IDs whatever. ONLY then will we see each other's special dots.
*When this special dot is clicked directly* it opens up a new dialogue window using your common programs regular interface. You can then send your message to the user. They can then deal with you as they wish, per the normal parameters of the chat programs.
Ideally, the Tribe Chat interface would be able to detect your settings on your chat programs, inculding statuses that indicate unavailability (such as invisible, ignore, etc) and leave your dot unmodified in such cases.
So essentially tribe would need to be able to detect a users chat program info/status, and convey those parameters to the profile icon periodically. It would also need to be able to send commands to the chat program when the special dot is clicked ("open new dialogue", etc.). This would require a fair amount of regular upgrades, as chat programs get updated, but hopefully not too often.
This could start small though, as a link to a special page with chat options. The page would have the logo for the program(s) supported by Tribe, which doubles as a 'download now' feature. You could then set your chat IDs on the same page, save and exit. So long as you are logged in to the service in question, Tribe detects it, and lights up your 'chat dot'.
I know that's more of a user-end experience description, but I'm not a technie so it's the best I've got.
Cheers.
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