Envolve (YC S11) Launches An API For Real-Time Chat

Here is a bit of 2000 bubble lore about a company that did the same thing.<p><a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/02/my-name-is-james-a-and-im-an-alcoholic/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/02/my-name-is-james-a-and-...</a><p>I am not saying this is relvant to anything, but it is just interesting.<p>In any event good luck to Envolve. I am sure they will do much better than gooey, mostly because they do not require users to download or install anything.

I hope this one makes it to its full potential. A heck of a lot more sites should have chat embedded on them than currently do. HN is a perfect example. We should have a "Chat" link in the navigation bar where we can hang out. We should be automatically signed in with our existing usernames.<p>A while ago I looked into doing this and were no good options. Mibbit was the closest but it's a bit ugly, doesn't have much of an API, and relies on IRC (which has pros and cons).<p>Personally I hate the Meebo-style bar they've implemented, but the actual chat is good and you can embed it in a page and disable the bar entirely.

"the site later allowed websites to merge the toolbar with their own user account systems — which has fared better. "<p>Exactly. And this puts them in an entirely different category from Meboo, etc. Anybody who ever ran a forum and has tried putting a real time chat on it will know this. TC got this slightly wrong; the only real competition out there is RealChat. There are simply no other solid solutions out there. I do this search every year and come up empty handed. As for RealChat, it is too expensive.

And here's envolve's cool HN implementation: <a href="http://envo.lv/http://news.ycombinator.com" rel="nofollow">http://envo.lv/http://news.ycombinator.com</a>

Mibbit has been offering such a service for years, but completely based on IRC under the hood.

Can someone explain to me why people keep referring to "Real-Time" chat? I've seen it multiple times and don't understand why... How is this in anyway different from just... chat. Is this some sort of buzzword bingo?

Hey HN - we've got some cool new developer tools now. We'd love some feedback if you guys want to give them a shot. Developers like you are our target audience.

This is awesome. Kinda related, I've been thinking for ages about whether one could now do encrypted chat between users in the browser, with the encryption happening at either end and the server never seeing plain-text.<p>Back in the real World, is there a mechanism to do a quick 'email to invite user to chat to me'? That would seem like a pretty solid way to win eyeballs.<p>My dad isn't on Yahoo, but he could click a link and run javascript.

I think the only piece that's missing for me is a way to bring chat logs into my application so people can review them later. My usage will be for users to answer questions so the content will be highly relevant to users who come along when a chat isn't active.

This appears to only support group chat.<p>What about one on one chat, like facebook? So that you can have personal conversations with other users of the site?

I'm using this on ThatHigh.com and it's awesome.

I think it should be more obvious that you can change your name without actually signing up for anything.

I think this is a great idea, so much potential, mainly in the community aspect.

Ideas:<p>1) Allow pasting images<p>2) Make a simple gfx JS editor to let users make simple drawings, it's fun<p>3) Personal ban list + spam reporting<p>4) Flood control