I’m finally getting around to considering what might happen here on election night. New server arrangements seem to have put an end to the heavy demand problems experienced by my WordPress database last week, but there’s no guarantee it would be able to handle the load on election night. In any case, chat rooms are probably a superior option, so I am giving this here Meebo feature a workout to see how it copes. At 10.30 EST (UPDATE: Not going to have my act together before than. Stay tuned – WB), blog comments will be closed for half-an-hour and the Poll Bludger faithful asked to carry on their normal discussion on Meebo. If all goes well I’ll have a couple of these running on election night, one being general and the other state-specific. My apologies to anyone who has firewall/proxy/software issues with this – hopefully I am allowing enough warning in advance so you can resolve these beforehand.
My other big idea is to have a separate chatroom on which only invitees can comment, but which anyone can view, to serve as a “news ticker”. At the risk of turning this into Studio 54, access will be limited to intelligence sources I deem to be high value. However, I am also putting out a call for volunteers so we can have a person monitoring each of the various election broadcasts on Saturday night so that any little nuggets that come to light on a particular broadcast are shared among all. If you’re up for this, please drop me a line at pollbludger – AT – bigpond – DOT – com.
In the meantime, feel free to familiarise yourselves with Meebo by stuffing around with it beforehand. It’s very easy to use: click on “edit nickname” to, like, edit your nickname (otherwise you’ll get a generic Meebo handle), type whatever you like in the small window immediately above, hit return, and bob’s your uncle.
NOTE: If this isn’t working at all, please let me know in comments.
NOTE 2: Seems I’ve got something basic wrong here. Am looking into it.
NOTE 3: Turning it off for the time being until I work out what to do.
NOTE 4: After a sort-of-successful experiment with Meebo, more chat room fun is scheduled for this evening.
William what happened to egalitarianism on Poll Bludger?
Some are created more worthy (invitation only) than others?
he means a particular window , so it doesnt get spammed ESJ
Hey I cant see anyone else on the meebo will?
Where is this Meebo of which you speak?
i dont think its working what i write appears on the screen but i cant see anyone else
ditto bill weller.
this nickname is offline..
keeps saying i am offline?
I think you use the one in the into bit William wrote. I did, I said test from West Hoxton, NSW or words to that effect and it appeared on the screen. It seems at this point to work just like standard chat functions in most places that I have been used to in the past.
I think William needs to be signed in for meebo to do its thing.
I can see my stuff, no-one else’s – is it online?
yes, can see only my own stuff and when i paged back to check it again, my stuff was gone, it didn’t stay there either.
Same here. Better off registering an IRC channel on Austnet or similar (Austnet only allow one channel registration per person), perhaps this can be shared around and then you can use a dedicated client like mirc which acan handle multiple channels/networks so you can have one on austnet, one on undernet etc.
Only my stuff William
Testing, ready for sat night. Will be watching very closely.
ditto Damien @ 10.
Glad it’s not just me.
oh the fun of the net.
geez, I’m an IT dunce, I can’t even see this “edit nickname” you speak of..
It just said username meeboguest613161 was online for me.
All your messages are appearing on my Meebo web page, but not on the screen above. Can anyone give me a quick answer to what they think I might need to do?
i am online now but still by myself
Aarrgh, I had meebo.com in my AdBlockPlus filter.
I was just thinking tonight that this site would probably melt down on election night. Sounds like a good solution, William, if you can get it to work (I just tried but report the same symptoms as others already have).
William, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but make sure you have Glen (or, if he is unavailable, ESJ) in Studio 54 on the big night. Otherwise will be too one-sided.
I’ll ask my kids.
The news ticker will be a forum for debate.
According ot the meebo wiki…
There is an infrequent bug where the buddy list doesn’t come up upon login.
1. Log out of meebo
2. Refresh the meebo page by holding down the ctrl key and hitting F5 key
3. Log back into meebo
I might be wrong but it looks to me as if meebo is admin to all, but not all to all.
I second the IRC recommendation. Maybe just use irc.oz.org, channel #pollbludger? Just need a channel that Willam creates, so he has op privileges.
BillBowe, you should have this beauty embedded somewhere if poss…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31FFTx6AKmU
I think I’ve put this link up before. But, hey, why do you think my alias is Dinsdale Piranha??
do we need to ceate a username acc. ?
Hey william if you go to bravenet you will find free chat rooms there- very simple, but very useful
Can we please not use this thread for things I don’t need to hear.
Perhaps Meebo isn’t quite the tool you need William?
Can I broadcast messages to everyone?
At this point, there is no official way to broadcast messages but you can set a customized away message using the away menu near the top of your buddy list that all of your visitors will see.
How many people can talk to me at any given time? Is there a limit?
Right now we have set the limit to 100 people who can see you online through your widget. In the future, we may make it a preference to help you do some crowd control. If you’ve got 100 peeps IMing you at any given time, you’re pretty popular and might wanna hit that Invisible mode! You can also disable a widget in the meebo pref pane.
anyway congrats william for always thinking of ways for us to write on here. Most would have given up on us ages ago
While we’re doing a dress rehearsal in here, you can go to the AEC website and practice your voting.
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/voting_practice.htm
Now I’ve see it all.
I am told that: “Real IRC involves running an actual server and everyone needing their own special MIRC software”. Does anyone disagree? If so, could they lend their assistance in setting it up?
Here’s the answer
Meebo Me Widget for WordPress
The people at Meebo recently announced a new service called MeeboMe that lets your visitors chat directly with you on any web page. The sad part is that this isn’t a shoutbox where every visitor can see each other–it’s a direct connection to you, just like an instant messenger. It’s a widget for WordPress.
I see. I thought Andrew Landeryou was using Meebo like that though.
William,
Re IRC read this 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC
I think the problem is that meebo is really supposed to be IM, one to one, not many to many.
Perhaps this is more like what you are after william
http://www.cgiscript.net/cgi-script/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=cgi.db&command=viewone&id=31
web based, no refreshing, many to many, no extra server setup.
The prob with irc it attracts hackers etc so if you do use it you need to have an invite only room. As far as i know to use IRC you need to download a program like MIRC and we will all have to do that. The opera browser carries its own IRC program
William
I understand you can start a channel from scratch on an existing server. Being an op though can be a bit of work.
http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/changuide.html#intro
Yes, you need IRC software -mIRC for windows is good as is Pidgin for Linux
Perhaps we have a guru who you trust around who could op for you?
I’m looking into Bravenet now.
if you need a few tips for getting bravenet chat rooms onto your wordpress site just ask Will
Yeah, what Dave from Albury says. I just set it up for my site and it allows me to interact with my customers, but each one on their own, not everyone in one big chat room
Thanks for the advice all, I’ll road test the options one by one and see what works.
William, I do believe there are a lot of html embedded irc clients out there.
Then all ya gotta do is make up your own channel on undernet.
Hi,
Can anyone tell me of the best sites, apart from this one, to get live, seat-specific counting updates on Saturday? Does the AEC do it on their site?
Any help much appreciated.
Perhaps this: http://www.chatzy.com/ might be an alternative – it’s an example only – if you google free chatrooms you might find something.
You’d just need to post a link (and password).
[Hi,
Can anyone tell me of the best sites, apart from this one, to get live, seat-specific counting updates on Saturday? Does the AEC do it on their site?
Any help much appreciated.]
Looks like this site is going to be good, provided it doesn’t crash of course.
http://www.orgburo.com/elections/
I believe they will have real time booth by booth results, which the ABC and AEC don’t have.
But that is only going on past experience, it may be different this time.
The ABC webpage is very reliable.