TravisDeyle.com

The web developers out there will appreciate Yaplet. Basically, it uses javascript to add a chat room to any site on the internet! It works by opening a sidebar (or new window) that contains the chat window.

Of course, the chat session is being handled by Yaplet's servers (so standard privacy/security concerns apply), but the functionality is really neat. It is a simple way to allow your site's visitors to communicate with one another. Essentially, this could eliminate the need for an IRC channel (or custom chat room, or static comments) for your site.

This service isn't being used too broadly at the moment, but I could see it taking off. I understand that they have commercial aspirations (and have won some contests for VC funding). I'm not sure how the business model will work, but it definitely is cool. Oh, did I forget to mention... This was done by a fellow Georgia Tech PhD student (almost graduated)!

You can see a few people actively chatting on Yaplet's site. If you want to see it working on TravisDeyle.com (your favorite site, obviously), click below! (A quick note: you probably need to be on my actual site and not in a feed aggregator for it to work.)

I've submitted the story to Digg as well. This could be very useful for people to have real-time conversations (instead of small, serial comments) on very popular posts. Maybe that could be their commercial application! To join the chat on my Digg submission, click below!

Oh yeah, thanks Szabolcs for pointing this out!

NOTE:  This post originally appeared on Hizook.com, which has been transformed into a robotics-centric website.  To preserve all of my original posts, I've transferred the content to my new homepage TravisDeyle.com.  I also encourage you to scope out the new Hizook!