Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-09-26 at 03:12 +0900, Jayson Williams wrote:
>> ...so there I was. Wishing there was some Ruby Guru nearby that could
>> coach me through this challenging bit of code. As I opened up my gmail
>> account to shoot off yet another question to the group, my eye spotted
>> the gmail chat feature to the left of the compose email window.
>>
>> "Wouldn't that be great?, " I thought to myself. " ...to have a list
>> of a dozen or so Ruby enthusiasts that also had a gmail account. I
>> could instantly see if they were  online, before I addressed the
>> entire group, and shoot out a quick question via chat."
>>
>> Not endorsing Gmail, or anything, just trying to use what I have to
>> the fullest. Gmail has a chat feature, and quick contacts window.
>> Clicking on a contact opens up a direct chat  with that user if they
>> are online.
>> So what do you think? Are there any community members that have Gmail,
>> and wouldn't mind helping one another out by adding each other to our
>> quick contacts list? Does this sound like something that would be
>> useful to anyone else?
> 
> GMail, and Google Talk, uses the open Jabber protocol. There are
> numerous clients and servers available -- you don't have to be a GMail
> user.
> 
> If something like that should work, though, it probably requires a
> dedicated Ruby Jabber server, so that one isn't forced to accept
> questions whenever online, but can enable and disable such an account at
> will.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Daniel

For that matter, most of the open source chat clients can get to IRC
these days, can't they? You could head over to the IRC channels. There's
a Ruby IRC library too, isn't there? Some times the "old" ways are best. ;)