Browsers upport

The Olark widget that is installed on your website is tested to use the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 9 and up
Chrome
Firefox
Safari
Opera
The Olark chat console works in modern versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari, though requires Internet Explorer version 10 and above.

Software and protocols

The following are common chat programs and protocols:

Apple Messages
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
Camfrog
Campfire
Gadu-Gadu
Google Talk
I2P-Messenger (anonymous, end-to-end encrypted im for the I2P network)
ICQ (OSCAR)
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
WILL GET
Paltalk
RetroShare (encrypted, decentralized)
QQ
SILC
Skype
Talk
Talkerymail also
TeamSpeak (TS)
WebChat Broadcasting System (WBS)
WhatsApp
Windows Live Messenger
XMPP
Yahoo! Messenger No longer available
Chat programs supporting multiple protocols:

Adium
Google+ Hangouts
Kopete
IBM Sametime
Miranda IM
Pidgin
Quiet Internet Pager
Trillian
Windows Live Messenger
Web sites with browser-based chat services (also see web chat):

Cryptocat
Chat Television No longer available
Convore No longer available
eBuddy
eXo Platform (Open Source)
Facebook
FilmOn
Gmail
Google+
Hall. com
Lycos Chat
MeBeam
Meebo No longer available
Mibbit
Omegle
Talkomatic
Tokbox No longer available
Tinychat
Trillian
Userplane
Woo Media No longer offered
Wireclub
Zumbl No longer available
See also[edit]
Chat room
Collaborative software
Instant messaging
List of virtual communities with more than 100 million active users
Live support software
Online dating service
Real-time text
Videotelephony

Social criticism

Criticism of online chatting and texts include concern that they replace proper English with shorthand or with an almost completely new hybrid language. [11][12][13]

Writing is changing as it takes on some of the functions and features of speech. Internet chat rooms and rapid real-time teleconferencing allow users to interact with whoever happens to coexist in cyberspace. These virtual interactions involve us in 'talking' more freely and more widely than ever before. [14] With chatrooms replacing many face-to-face conversations it is necessary to be able to have quick conversation as if the person were present, so many people learn to type as quickly as they would likely normally speak. Critics[who?] are wary that this casual form of speech is being used so much that it will slowly take over common grammar; however, such a change has yet to be seen.

With the increasing population of online chatrooms there has been a massive growth[15] of new words created or slang words, many of them documented on the website Urban Dictionary. Sven Birkerts wrote:

"as new electronic modes of communication provoke similar anxieties amongst critics who express concern that young people are at risk, endangered by a rising tide of information over which the traditional controls of print media plus the guardians of knowledge have no control on it". [16]

In Guy Merchant's journal article Teenagers in Cyberspace: An Investigation of Language Use and Language Change in Internet Chatrooms; Merchant says

"that teenagers and young people are in the leading the movement of change as they take advantage of the possibilities of digital technology, drastically changing the face of literacy in a variety of media through their uses of mobile phone text messages, e-mails, web-pages and on-line chatrooms. This new literacy develops skills that may well be important to the labor market but are currently viewed with suspicion in the advertising and by educationalists. [14]

Merchant also says "Younger people tend to be more adaptable than other sectors of society and, in general, quicker to adapt to new technology. To some extent they are the innovators, the forces of change in the new communication landscape. "[14] In this article he is saying that young people are merely adapting to what they were given.

Chatiquette

The phrase chatiquette (chat etiquette) is a variation of netiquette (Internet etiquette) and describes basic rules of online communication. [4][5][6] These conventions or guidelines have been created to avoid misunderstandings and to simplify the communication between users. Chatiquette varies from community to community and generally describes basic courtesy. As an example, it is considered rude to write only in upper case, because it appears as if the user is shouting. The word "chatiquette" has been used in connection with various chat systems (e. g. Internet Relay Chat) since 1995. [7][8]

Chatrooms can produce a strong sense of online identity leading to feeling of subculture. [9]

Chats are valuable sources of various types of information, the automatic processing of which is the object of chat/text mining technologies. [10.

History

The primary online chat system was called Talkomatic, created by Doug Brown and David R. Woolley in 1973 on the PLATO System at the University of Illinois. It offered several channels, each of which could accommodate up to five people, with messages appearing on all users' screens character-by-character as they were typed. Talkomatic was very popular among PLATO users into the mid-1980s. In 2014 Brown and Woolley released a web-based version of Talkomatic.

The first online system to use the actual command "chat" was created for The Source in 1979 by Tom Walker and Fritz Thane of Dialcom, Inc.

The first transatlantic Internet chat was held between Oulu, Finland and Corvallis, Oregon in February of 1989. [1]

The first dedicated online chat service that was widely available to the public was the CompuServe CB Simulator in 1980, [2][3] created by CompuServe executive Alexander "Sandy" Trevor in Columbus, Ohio. Ancestors include network chat software such as UNIX "talk" used in the 1970s.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 1st online chat system was called Talkomatic, created by Doug Brown and David R. Woolley in 1973 on the PLATO System at the University of Illinois. It offered several channels, each of which could accommodate up to five people, with messages appearing on all users' screens character-by-character as they were typed. Talkomatic was very popular among PLATO users into the mid-1980s. In 2014 Brown and Woolley released a web-based version of Talkomatic.

The first online system to use the actual command "chat" was created for The Source in 1979 by Tom Walker and Fritz Thane of Dialcom, Inc.

The first transatlantic Internet chat came about between Oulu, Finland and Corvallis, Oregon in February of 1989. [1]

The first dedicated online chat service that was widely available to the public was the CompuServe CB Simulator in 1980, [2][3] created by CompuServe executive Alexander "Sandy" Trevor in Columbus, Ohio. Ancestors include network chat software such as UNIX "talk" used in the 1970s.

Microsoft’s Edge browser may be storing private browsing data

When Microsoft’s Edge browser arrived this summer alongside Windows 10, it was seen as a major step forward, incorporating new features like Cortana Assist alongside tricks that had become popular elsewhere, like Reading List and the new InPrivate browsing mode.

But now, new research suggests that InPrivate may not be as private as it seems. According to an investigation by researcher Ashish Singh, websites visited from InPrivate can be easily recovered from a user’s hard drive by examining the WebCache report. Visited sites are stored in the same "Container_n" table that stores tab history from conventional browsing, the investigation found.

By examining that table, an attacker would be able to reconstruct a user’s entire browsing history, whether in Private Mode or not. "The not-so-private browsing featured by Edge makes its very purpose seem to fail, " Singh wrote in Forensic Focus...