What is Chatsum? Chatsum is an extension for Firefox that allows you to chat with other Chatsum users that are looking at the same website as you.
I literally [?external:http://www.stumbleupon.com stumbled upon] the website for [?external:http://www.chatsum.com Chatsum] a couple months ago. The site only contained information about the firefox extension, and I thought it’d be cool, and signed up for updates and promptly forgot about it. This past Monday I got an e-mail stating they were ready for testers. I had to read about the Firefox extension again, but immediately installed it once I did.
The Chatsum extension opens a sidebar on the left of the Firefox window. Once you register/login, there are two tabs, Site and Page. The Site tab allows you to chat with anyone viewing the same site you are at, regardless of page, such as [?external:http://www.chatsum.com http://www.chatsum.com], whereas the Page tab allows you to chat on a particular page, such as [?external:http://www.chatsum.com/members/SeanEtCetera http://www.chatsum.com/members/SeanEtCetera]. Next to that, there is (currently) a “bug” icon, which takes you to the page listing known bugs, as well as how to report them. The final item present is an unlocked lock icon. When it is unlocked, any site/page you go to in the window will cause the chat to change, but when it is locked, the chat for the site/page you were on will follow you no matter where you surf to.
Just below all that is the scrolling chat window. I’m not sure as to the specifics, but it shows (about) the last 50 messages left on a page. If the page is active, these comments may only be from the last couple hours or days. However, if the page hadn’t had many comments left, it could go back many months.
At the bottom of the sidebar is tab that expands up when clicked, titled Places to Chatsum. When open, it lists the names of all users currently on the page. Below that are items that can be expanded that show the most active pages where Chatsum users are, well, active, the most recent comments made by any user on any site, the sites with the most comments, and then some preferences for Chatsum.
I have enjoyed using it thus far. Most sites haven’t had too many people actively chatting, with the exception of the Chatsum website. However, with a user base of 1086 active users (at this time), that’s too be expected, considering the number of timezones the users may be in and all that. The two main developers are [?external:http://www.chatsum.com/members/George George] and [?external:http://www.chatsum.com/members/Lee Lee], both of London, England. It’s been nice being able to chat with them at the chatsum site, and ask questions about how it works, and ideas for the future, some of which I will try and list here.
Q: How will Chatsum possibly resolve funding issues, for things like server load and hard drive space?
A: This was answered by Lee in a chat sometime on Monday or Tuesday. His comment was that they’d like to keep the financial side small, so that they do not have to make too many compromises to chatsum itself. Foreseen ways to take care of expenses include:
- Sale of aggregated data, but nothing personally identifying, just stats and trends.
- Introducing a paid subscriber account with some more features, load priority, no ads, etc., but in a way to keep the free service compelling in it’s own right, and not compromise it to provide a feature to subscribers.
Q: Does Checksum track all my browsing when I have the extension installed?
A: Also answered by Lee in chat this past Tuesday. He said that Chatsum only tracks visited sites the the Chatsum sidebar is open.
Q: Does Chatsum affect any network usage?
A: Since Chatsum operates over port 80/www, it calls the sidebar similar to any other page your browse to.
I think one of the most interesting uses of this extension/service is the ability to use Chatsum on urls that are not websites/pages. For example, you could go to http://127.0.0.1, http://192.168.1.1, or even about:config, and if someone else happens to be “looking” at that location, you could talk. (I think I should add “provided you are connected to the Internet”.) The benefit of the latter 2, the address for a Linksys router configuration page and the configuration page for Firefox, would be to leave different setup options for securing/fixing a router or Firefox issue. The coolest part is being able to chat in the aether of the web, where pages have yet to be created and bits and bytes fly about in the chaotic eddys that flow there by going somewhere like http://where.the.bits.and.bytes.fly/.
As the tag line for Chatsum says “On the web, no one can hear you scream… until now!“.
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