Online chatting, as we already know, is the most popular online social activity of all. While it’s fun, it often needs a client-side application to have a real-time and direct communication with our chatting buddies. Online Chatting applications, like GoogleTalk, YahooMessenger, MSN Messenger, etc, create a barrier in which only the users with the same application can have a direct chat with each other. Some web services try to overcome this barrier by having a full browser-side online chatting services. We have posted several such services in the past, like Zoho Chat, Imeem or AliTalk. And now, there’s another online chat service with 100% browser side application that’s definitely worth to try. It’s called Lingr.
Lingr is a new web-based chat service with the ability to find topic chat rooms based on tags. It is a place where you can chat about anything you want, without any hassle. It’s free! Lingr is similar to other chat programs like IRC, AIM, and so on. But with Lingr you don’t need any special software or accounts  all you need is your browser (Lingr supports all modern browsers: Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 6, etc.).
Here is the list of highlights:
- Hot tags. You can crawl over the tag cloud to see what currently are the hot topics of conversation.
- Guest access. You don’t have to sign up until you want to have your own assets on the site- your images, your own rooms, or your list of favorite rooms.
- Private rooms. As a registered user, you can create private rooms to have a chat with your friends and family. Private rooms are not listed in the public, and don’t show up in search results. You can also protect any room with a password that you choose.
- Image/movie pasting. It’s really easy to show your images and movies in the chat room. Currently Lingr supports links to JPEG, GIF and PNG files for images, or YouTube for movies
- Archives. Your chat logs are safe. Everyting that is said in a chatroom is saved without any limitation, and you can revisit the archive at any later time.
- Permalink. Chat rooms, archives, and the most of other views you see in Lingr have consistent URL and are bookmark-able.
The most notable feature of Lingr is the fact that it allows real-time communication between the server and your browser. To accomplish this, Lingr uses Comet. Comet basically means that the browser (client) keeps a connection open to the server, so that the server can notify the client in real-time when interesting events occur.
This new service is definitely worth to try. And when we tried Lingr, we were quite astonished on how fast the connection was. The fact that it is built heavily with Ajax is what made Lingr cool. Try it out yourself by going into any rooms. You can post your comments here afterwards!
