The KiwiWriters Jabber Room
- What is the KiwiWriters Chatroom?
- How do I connect to it so I can hang out with you all?
- I need help setting up my client. Can you help me?
- Why did you choose Jabber? I already have an IM client with <someone>?
Q: What is the KiwiWriters Chatroom?
The KiwiWriters Chatroom is a 24 hours a day chatroom where you can hang out, stay and chat, do word wars with other members and just generally be social.
Q: How do I connect to it so I can hang out with you all?
Firstly, you need a Jabber Instant Messaging client and a Jabber account so you can join the room.
Then you need to connect to the server and join the room. This procedure differs with each client, but the details you'll need are:
Room: kiwiwriters Server: conference.jabber.org
You should probably use the same handle as you use on the KiwiWriters site so that we all know who you are.
Q: I need help setting up my client. Can you help me?
There are many clients out there for many platforms. Some of which are better than others so you might have to try a few out.
Travis has produced a thorough set of instructions on setting up Pidgin which is one of the better clients.
Q: Why did you choose Jabber? I already have an IM client with <someone>?
We chose using the Jabber Protocol for two main reasons:
1) Jabber is an open standard and therefore any Jabber server can talk to any other (like GTalk for instance). You also get to choose which client you use. None of the other IM systems are open and instead are very closed and picky about who you can talk too.
2) The members at KiwiWriters have email addresses at the following ratios: Gmail 35%, Hotmail 24%, Yahoo! 12%, Misc 31%.
Since Gmail uses number the highest and by using GTalk they can already chat to any Jabber enabled chatroom, this made the most sense. We also hope that in the future Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other proprietary IM systems will also be able to chat with Jabber.