A very quick post to say that the Chatsum 0.4 extension is now available. This version adds Flock and Firefox 1.5.0.1 compatibility.

Existing users of Chatsum 0.3 can upgrade via the Firefox Extensions window and 0.4 has become the default download during the registration process for beta testers.

A note to Flock users:
As Flock doesn’t have a View -> Sidebar menu, to active Chatsum, you’ll have to use the Ctrl-Alt-C keyboard shortcut or add the Chatsum button to your toolbar via the View -> Toolbars -> Customise… menu. Just drag the green orb to your toolbar.

So here it is, the first, public Chatsum Roadmap just 24hrs since the beta launched. This is essentially a list of things that we believe are essential for Chatsum, arranged based on the number of beta testers requesting them so far.

1. Scrolling in chat window.

2. Member log-in and change details page.

3. User preferences (e.g. for opening links in same window or new tab).

4. Member profile pages and links to them from the chat transcript.

5. Live ‘Users in this room’ list.

6. User blocking.

7. Buddy lists.

8. More complex SPAM reporting/moderating/blocking.

9. Badges and banners to link to member profiles and where you’re chatting now.

10. Dynamic transcript timestamps.

11. Skins

12. API

We received many more feature requests than those listed above so, at present we’re only including the priority tasks. For the more complex issues (those that may change the way Chatsum is perceived or used, or those that it wasn’t clear how many users were for or against) we’re planning on hosting public discussions followed by a poll.

For the non-Firefox users, don’t worry we’ll be continuing the porting of Chatsum to Safari and Internet Explorer alongside the above Roadmap. All of the above features should become available to you once we’ve got the extensions for your browsers made.

Oh, and one last thing: a Flock and Firefox 1.5.0.1 compatible extension will be available in the next few days.

This is the list of bugs that we’re currently aware of - we’ll cross them off the list as we squash them.

1. Posts sometimes appear twice in the chat transcript.

2. Posts from room A sometimes appear in room B when switching from one to the other.

3. Non-Latin text appears garbled on the Chatsum website.

4. Staying in a room for a very long time causes sluggish behaviour.

5. The Ctrl-Alt-C shortcut sometimes fails to toggle the Chatsum sidebar (Note: this appears to be a Firefox bug, at least on Mac OS. If you experience this bug try clicking on the Firefox window and pressing Ctrl-Alt-C again. If it still doesn’t work please let us know).

6. OS X Firefox in some cases refuses to install the extension. We’ve had reports of the url not loading or of the extension appearing in the Extensions window and then disappearing. Any more reports from people having trouble installing would be great as we haven’t been able to recreate this in the lab.

Well we’ve been chatting for six and a half hours straight now and our eyes are bloodshot and our fingers bleeding but so far it’s been truly fantastic! We’re overwhelmed with the response and our thanks go out to all the beta-testers for their feature requests, good manners, encouragement and overall enthusiasm.

Before the night is out, we just wanted to say that we’ll be composing a list of the most requested features and our roadmap for implementing them just as soon as we can tear ourselves away from the chat. We’ll then open this up for user comments so we know what to work on first.

Until then, thanks for visiting and most importantly, thanks for chatting.

Team Chatsum

We’re pleased to announce that we will be releasing version 0.3 of the Chatsum Firefox extension to our beta testers this Friday.

If you’ve already signed up to beta test, we will direct you towards a Register page this Friday. This page will allow you to choose a screen name, text colour and password for Chatsum. Once you have registered, you’ll see the installation instructions for the Chatsum 0.3 extension. Please don’t waste your time installing the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons site, we will provide you with a link to the latest version on Friday.

If you haven’t already signed up, we are no longer accepting applications for this initial test. We hope to expand the test to more users as soon as possible, so please enter your e-mail in the sign-up box (in the top-right) and we’ll e-mail you as soon as we’re ready for ‘Phase Two’.

Well something funny happened tonight, I came upstairs to check my mail quickly and behold, what did I find? I found that some clever and resourceful members of our beta list had done a little digging and found our hidden register page. So we had a group of feral testers roaming around the halls of chatsum! Eeek!

So to those that got in, well done and apologies that your experience had to be cut short. Rest assured that we will be going live with the beta this week and you guys will get an e-mail beforehand telling you when and where. There’ll no doubt be a few changes first, part of the reason we are moving to a new server is to implement some of them, so although your feedback is massively appreciated you may want to hold off until the official launch in a few days time.

Phew, panic over, carry on!

Greetings from Team Chatsum,

Well it’s been quite a week and we’re thrilled with all the coverage we’ve had over the past seven days. We’ve received many more applications for the beta than we had expected, and as a consequence we’ve gone and spent some money on a new server so as not to exclude anyone from taking part in this first phase (that’s a donate button over there by the way, wink wink).

This means however that we’re going to need a few more days to set-up our new shiny box, though we still hope to release the beta sometime this week.

If you still haven’t signed up to the beta list then do it today as we’ll soon be ending admissions for the first round.

We’ve had a great day for beta sign-ups, a big thanks to Régine over at we-make-money-not-art.com.

For all those interested in Web 2.0, Carson Workshops still have a few seats left for the 2006 Future of Web Apps Summit on the 8th of February. There’s a fantastic list of speakers and Tom Coates has already started blogging about what he’s going to say.

Lee and I will both be attending so let us know if you’re going and you’d like to Chatsum!

I’ve just posted some ‘in use’ screenshots over on Flickr. We’ll be using this set to quickly publish pictures to thoughout the development of Chatsum. Take a look:

http://flickr.com/photos/imgeorge/sets/1794198/

Just in case you didn’t believe the banner on our homepage saying that the OS X Chatsum Widget was on the way, we thought we’d give you a tantalising preview.

The Widget is currently number two on the priority list, second only to acquiring a decent number of beta testers so the quicker you sign up, the quicker you’ll get a Safari compatible version of Chatsum.