BigBlueButton is an open source video conferencing application which is specifically built for remote learning but can be used for standard meetings as well.

The application enables multiple users to login & share their webcam or communicate via VOIP at the same time.

It is a very ideal application for presentations as users can upload PDF or office documents & keep everyone in sync with their current page, zoom, pan, mouse pointer etc.

Also, users can share their desktop with others easily.

There are 3 user types:

• Presenter: can upload presentations & sharing their desktop
• Viewer: have no authority within the conference, can only view & chat with other users
• Moderator:can upload presentations, share the desktop & change user types of other users.

Users can raise hands to get the attention of the presenter, mute any other participants they want & chat between themselves in public or privately.

BigBlueButton completely relies on open source technologies & it can be improved further with the API provided.

iJab is an open source, web-based & Ajaxed instant messenger application that uses the XMPP/Jabber protocol.

It is written in JavaScript, uses Google Gears for clientside storage & supports MSN, AIM or any other XMPP-based services (you can easily create a closed chat group for your community).

iJab has lots of features like:

• theme support
• new message pop-up notifications
• multi-user chat
• search users
• avatar, smiley support
• & much more..

The application has 3 modes: stand-alone application, Facebook-like web chat bar in page & live support

IntraMessenger is a free application for that enables communication between communities, groups, companies or simply closed groups.

It consists of a client (for Windows) & a PHP-MySQL-based open source server to manage the whole communication.

The messenger is autonomous, but authentication (login + password) is possible from other existing databases like forums, groupware applications, e-learning systems, etc.

It can operate in 2 modes:

• open community : everybody can see everybody, without add to contact list
• groups only : everybody can see everybody (but only) is they are in the same group

IntraMessenger has a multilingual interface & it is a handy application for enabling web-based communities to communicate in the desktop.

There are various ways that most users prefer while communicating via internet. IMs (MSN Messenger, Skype..), social networks (Facebook, Twitter..) & others.

However, there are some situations where all the audience may not have the necessary tools to communicate at the same platforms like a user not having Skype installed or not having a Twitter account.

This is where the disposable chat systems become handy. Whether you will be talking with a client, a teammate or a friend, just a standards compliant browser & an internet connection will be enough.

Here are 7 easy to use & free disposable chat systems (text or video) for an instant communication:

TinyChat

TinyChat is probably the most popular disposable chat application.

It has support for both video & text where both works very nice.

There is also an API to automatically create rooms which is great for integrating it with 3rd party products.

BabelWith.Me

The application offers a quick group chat with a unique feature: it can translate the content from 45 different languages instantly which makes the communication of x number of users not speaking each other's language possible.

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CometChat, a Facebook-style chat script -which enables website users to chat with each other easily- is giving away 2 licenses ($49/each) to WebResourcesDepot readers. Details on "how to join" can be found at the end of the post.

What is CometChat?

It is a PHP / MySQL script for creating a chat environment that can be used while visitors are browsing any page of the website.

Users can select their statuses (like busy, available, invisible or a custom one), "get friends" with each other & see if their friends are online or not.

The interface automatically converts related entries into smileys or well-formatted links & it can notify users with audio messages when a message arrives.

CometChat is multilingual, can be translated to any language & besides the standard icons, new ones can be placed to for a better integration with any website.

The script comes in 2 versions:

• standalone: for  integrating it with your existing social networking, dating or community site
• vBulletin edition: instant integration with this forum software

How To Win The Free Licenses?

You have 2 options to join the giveaway where you can do both of them to increase the chance of winning:

• comment to this post with at least "I want the license" text besides any other comment
• ReTweet this message at Twitter: Facebook-Style Chat Application: CometChat (http://www.cometchat.com/) (2 Licenses Giveaway): http://tr.im/r2sU (via @umutm) (click the link to ReTweet easily).

Winners will be selected randomly on 13th July 2009 (1 week later & they can choose whether they want to get the standalone or the vBulletin edition.

Good luck to all.

toksta* is a free instant messenger with text & webcam based chat support.

It is a hosted application that can be integrated to your website & user database. With this feature, your users won’t have to re-login to the messenger. 

toksta* also provides plug-ins for phpBB2, phpBB3, punBB, phpMyForum and vBulletin.

toksta* lets you customize the design via an easy to use configurator & you can upload your logo to the application.

Another nice feature is the revenue sharing. The revenue of ads that are shown during the chat is shared between the site owner & toksta*.

Besides these, toksta* has unlimited parallel chats, automatic webcam detection, buddy list integration supoort & more. Click here to see all the features.

firefly is a totally different chat system which can power your websites.

By adding a line of JavaScript, your visitors can chat with each other in an overlayed screen.

Users can:

• See other users mouse movements,
• Choose avatars,
• See the chat history,
• Howmany people are already in the page.

As a developer, all I can ask for more is an API that enables integrating any userbase to the system for adding auto avatars, names to the users etc. Considering this is a fresh chat service, in the future, why not?

You should definitely give firefly a try & will probably be impressed.

Mia Chat is an Ajaxed PHP chat application which is very simple to use & install.

It functions similar to the messenger applications, you can add buddies, chat with several users at the same time, change your online status & more.

This PHP chat supports many databases for storing data like MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle 8+, MS SQL Server 2000+, SQLite 2+ and PostgreSQL 7+.

JibberBook is an open source Ajaxed guestbook application built with PHP5.

It stores the data in a XML file (optional MySQL support) and provides an easy to use interface.

For security, JibberBook uses:

• HTML Purifier (see WRD post) for filtering inputs against XSS attacks.
• Akismet for spam protection so users won’t need to enter captcha information.

This PHP guestbook application uses Mootools and it is unobtrusive (it will work even if the JavaScript is disabled).

wTag is a shoutbox script (mini chat) written in PHP which uses Ajax to refresh the chat.

It uses MySQL to store the data, has a CSS-based smiley dropdown which can be enabled/disabled and a bad words & spam filter.

Other features of this PHP shoutbox script are:

• Replace URLs catched in a message with clickable links.
• UTF-8 encoding for multilingual support.
• Compliance with XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS.
• Custom designs: it’s easy to change the chatbox look by editing the CSS files.
• A form validation and warnings display system.