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Chrome Extension that adds anonymous live chat to every site you're browsing.

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Re: Chrome Extension that adds anonymous live chat to every site you're browsing.

#11
post #8

If a large % of Facebook users used this, it would quickly become unusable on the site. Any ideas about handling large usage - separate people out into smaller manageable groups by IP/geo/other?

At present, if a large % of my apartment building used this, it would quickly trash my server ;).

My intention is to just see how things develop, and if I need to upgrade servers and write some more intelligent routing, then I absolutely will. :)

Re: Chrome Extension that adds anonymous live chat to every site you're browsing.

#15
I once tried to convince my employer to let me do something like this via a Java applet in the banner ads we were running (yes, banner ads can include applets). The idea was that all the people seeing our ad could chat among themselves, and the hope was the would be unusual enough to get people to actually notice the ad.

Sadly, they wouldn't let me try it.

Re: Chrome Extension that adds anonymous live chat to every site you're browsing.

#17
_why was one of the first to implement this, in 2005. It wasn't a chat, but a comment system for hackers.

The installation instructions were intentionaly elusive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051125122020/http://hoodwinkd.h...

The IP adresses point to DNS servers that serve two custom domains: hoodwink.d and ___._ (or you could add them to your host file? not sure...).

From there you could browse those sites that had further info, and enjoined you to install a greasemonkey script that injected the comment div in the target pages.

To add hoodwink'd comments to a site, you had to register it at hoodwink.d, with an URL regexp to recognize the site, and an xpath query to locate the point where the comment thread would be inserted.

There were also RSS feeds, that allowed to follow a commenter, or get all the updates of a given site.

Cool stuff. .

Here is some more info

A longer description: http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/2006/01/hoodwinkd.html

Magnus Holm, debugging the system: http://oldblog.judofyr.net/posts/who-broke-hoodwinkd.html

A few screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robbyrussell/3838274563/in/phot...

Re: Chrome Extension that adds anonymous live chat to every site you're browsing.

#20
This always seems like such a good idea to me. Like walking around a busy city bustling with people all around.

But then I realize I would never use it. The idea of broadcasting my browsing habits page by page to a third party is creepy beyond belief.

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