All About Chatting On The Net

Internet Relay Chat lets people all over the world participate in real-time conversations. In fact, some get so addicted to it that there's a Usenet newsgroup entitled alt.irc.recovery.

On-line services are pros at this chat business. Why not? After all, many of them eke out their existence out of chatting. It looks like people, surfers or otherwise, can never get enough of chatting. Or chatting about chatting. America Online's People Connection with its numerous chatrooms is its most endearing feature. In its cooking club, for instance, recipe swaps occur on Sunday evenings, vegetarians meet on Wednesdays, and healthy cooking is the topic on Saturday nights. Of course, there are many more chatrooms for everyone from kiddies to seniors. Cyberchefs can gather in CompuServe's Cook's Online Forum on Tuesdays and Delphi's Cyberkitchen on Wednesdays.

Closer home, chat has been in the eye of an IRC storm recently when some complained that some Indian talkers indulge in some wild talking at Talkcity, VSNL's default IRC server. But that was an IRC chat. Rediff on the Net (http://www.rediff.co.in) invites anyone in the world to join the Web-based chat at their site. And what exactly do they chat about over here?

Anything. It all began with LK Advani. Invites were sent out to all newspapers and the event was advertised beforehand. Many logged in out of curiosity, including several NRIs and some journalists from Mumbai. You select a nickname (handle) for yourself, key in your questions and he would type his answers. The BJP leader was quite impressed, and a largely pro-BJP NRI audience helped too. Since then, Rediff has been at it relentlessly. The frequency of chats have increased, and so has the size of the audience.

The interviewees included TN Seshan, Rajesh Pilot, Montek Sigh Ahluwalia, RH Patil, Manpreet Brar, Saurav Ganguly etc. On Wednesday, Kiran Bedi was interviewed for two hours, and the lady faced quite a bit of bouquets and brickbats.

Same day, Rediff opened their new computer section Infotech@india and the chat room on com:port. This chatroom will offer you chats on various IT topics, something surfers will be quite happy to take part in.

IT critic Vijay Mukhi was the first interviewee who, true to his nature, chose the topic