Web In Depth

The fact is that there are lots of services that we use today, but never really pay that much attention. Most of the time this is okay as you do not need a very deep knowledge to use the basic features. Also the shear amount of application and services running around means that one person can’t keep track of everything. Still this should not mean that we have to be totally ignorant of the history or abilities of the application. You would be surprise at the cool facts and useful hacks that a careful investigation revel. Been myself guilty of not paying too much attention to the services except use it; I thought it appt that I used this blog as an opportunity to try to expand my horizons. This will be certainly novel stuff to me and hopefully to you. So from now on I will select a topic and explore the fundamental things we should know as web surfers to make our experience more wonderful and productive. Bear with me if things are not crystal clear from the start, as I am also experimenting, but I guarantee that as we go on with your participation we can grow this blog in to a comprehensive guide for casual web users.

So as my first area of investigation I am looking at chat. The first thing I found confusing was the difference between chat, instant messaging, Instant relay chat, chat rooms ect…

Well basically chat can be though of as any form of communication between users in a network in real time. Real time is the key fact that differentiates chat from email. Email does not need both users to be online at same time. Some chart applications allow users to send messages to friends that are offline, in which case the boundary between email and chat get fuzzy. Notice that I mentioned “network” not “internet”. Although most of the chat applications run on internet (which is also a network) there are others that can run on LAN’s or point to point. If you look at history the first chat application was between users of a multi-user O/S.

Instant messaging is probably the most famous type of chat and initially involved sending messages between users in a network, although now it can mean a lot more than text messages. They are probably the most famous type of chat application around.

Chat rooms are sometimes identified as chat by some authors, but it is essentially a place were more than one user is connected and everyone can see the others messages. You can select to send message to one person or many. It is form of community communication and was very popular in early 1990, but less popular now.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is another method of messaging; it differs at the technological level and needs its own clients with unique commands to message a group (called a channel in IRC jargon) or send private messages to friends.

Lot of people associate chat with internet ad some even with the web, but the interesting fact I unearthed was chat predates internet and was first seen in 1960s were it was used in multi use systems such as CTSS and Multics.

Then came something more network based with Online-messages by Quantum Link. This was a messaging service that allowed exchange of messages within connected commodore 64 computers.

Only much later in 1996 that the first true internet client was born and that was ICQ (I seek you) client closely followed by AOL instant messaging (AIM). These were followed by a multitude of companies releasing there own client and service. Eg: MSN, YAhoo, Excite.

One fundamental mistake I believe they did at the start due to everybody been so anxious to put out there own chat was that they never cared on standardization of a protocol. This meant every one was using there own proprietary protocols that where not interoperable. This means either everybody adapts one service (never happened or happens) or we need different applications to chat with others using some other application. As chat grew this became a very cumbersome method to keep in touch. Obviously the users have there preferences, especially loyalty to certain company. So the companies need to come together and decide on some common grounds.

One of the early attempts at this consolidation was jabber protocol which is an open standard meaning anyone with domain name and internet connection can implement it in there own server. Then they can communicate with other users in other servers. This is akin to email where anyone can put up a mail server. the crucial feature of jabber was the ability to allow access to other networks running different protocols through gateways. This other protocols included other IM protocol and even SMS and email. The core difference between Jabber and other multi-protocol client is Jabber handles multiple protocols at server level, thus putting no additional restraints on clients, except they have to adhere well to Jabber protocol.

Other attempts at interoperability will be covered in another post.

Chat has obviously evolved from its humble start and we can identify six key areas of growth (according to this techcrunch post ). These are interoperability, contextual chat, location based chat, In-browser chat, Flexible identities, and Rich media chat. I will touch all these in the next few days and much much more, so stay tuned.

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