LiveJournal adds Jabber messaging

by Jordan Running Jul 7th 2006

Those that have been keeping up with Six Apart's open source work may be aware of DJabberd, which is a framework for building Jabber chat servers (Jabber, of course, being the open IM protocol that powers Google Talk/Gmail Chat). It's unsurprising, then, that the company has just announced the integration of a Jabber server into LiveJournal. Though I use the term "integration" loosely--for now it's just a Jabber server running on livejournal.com--you can now use any Jabber client, like iChat, Gaim, Trillian Pro, Adium X, or Google Talk, to chat with other Jabber users. The service seems to be going by the name "LJ Talk," and you can get on right now using your LiveJournal username and password and livejournal.com for the server. Be aware, however, that it's still very beta, and every time you connect (which will be often, as disconnections are frequent) you'll get a message from the server that says "LJ Talk is currently a pre-alpha service lacking tons of features and probably with a bunch of bugs. We're actively developing it, constantly restarting it with new stuff. So just don't be surprised if the service goes up and down a lot." And it does. Still, pretty cool. More details can be found in the announcement on lj_dev.

[Via Waxy.org]

Tags: 6a, Brad Fitzpatrick, BradFitzpatrick, chat, danga, gmailchat, googletalk, jabber, livejournal, lj, ljtalk, sixapart

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters