Websites are an asynchronous media. You visit you view and maybe write a mail either via your e-mail client or via a web form. But there are times, when you want to be contacted synchronously. Some people just like being available to the world, others (e.g. sales representatives) want to have a way to directly be in contact with their customers. Whatever reason you might have to provide a synchronous contact to yourself. Here are various ways to do it.

ICQ (download)

I don't know if this is still the best or even a good IM but I started out with it and now I am stuck. However ICQ is very omnipresent.

Message Center
All of the techniques described here are also accessible though a user's message center. This is basically a web page located at

http://www.icq.com/whitepages/wwp.php?uin=98057455

which stores about all information about the user.

Sending a message
If you also have ICQ installed you can have links everywhere on the web which will open up your ICQ providing a chat window to the addressent. Those links must look like this:

http://www.icq.com/whitepages/cmd.php?uin=98057455&action=message

Adding user to your contact list
Same thing as above: Interaction with your ICQ to add a user. Uses the following link:

http://www.icq.com/whitepages/cmd.php?uin=98057455&action=add

to do so.

Skype (download)

Skype is currently the best tool I know for VOIP-Telephoning. Recently with their first stable release, you can also globally call into the telephony-networks. It uses pretty little bandwidth and is completely free of charge if you stay on peer-to-peer VOIP-calls.

Calling a user
You can embed simple links into your website, which (if Skype is installed on the client) open up Skype and initiate a call to the user. The Links must look like this:

callto://WittRaider

AIM (download)

AOL Instant Messenger was probably second most popular, when I was using it back a few years ago.

Send a message
Just like with ICQ you can directly send a message through you client installation of AIM to the addressent by clicking a link like:

aim:goim?screenname=WittRaider&message=hello

Others

I know that I have currently been missing out on other instant messengers like MSN or Yahoo now. Sorry for that maybe later. Also you may always want to integrate a chat, possibly on an IRC base.

I just wanted to inform you what to expect on this blog in the next days/weeks. I have been experimenting with three main subjects over the last weeks, which I now want starting to present to the world ;-)

JavaScript classes and code distribution

As a preparation for the following two subjects I have implemented JavaScript classes, meaning I have been looking around the web and aggregating method how to create JavaScript structures which behave like classical object oriented classes providing features such as inheritance, polimorphism and the likes. Also I wanted classes to be distributable in multiple files across multiple servers and still be loadable on the fly, in order to increase cross-domain reusability of JavaScript objects.

Interaction between JavaScript and Flash

This became critical when designing the MP3-Player for the music section of this homepage. I wanted a generic way to interact with Macromedia Flash objects via JavaScript guaranteeing a bidirectional communication via remote function calls and distributed event publishing, even across the domain scripting border and across all browsers I use (being Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Netscape and Opera).

Client-sided TagLibs

Developers in touch with J2EE or at least JSP know JSTL (Java Standard TagLib), also know about the power to such a templating language. Now there are mechanisms which allow tag lib type technology on the client using JavaScript. Sound interesting? It certainly is! So stay tuned on this blog!