by Michelle Lentz
I stumbled across Firefly today via Dave Winer’s Twitter feed. Firefly is being developed out of Betaworks and is still in alpha.
I don’t really have much to say about Firefly; I just wanted to draw some attention to it, as it offers yet another way for users on your web site to communicate.
I gather it is fairly easy to install. Once it’s installed on your web site, all users need to do is click a button. They can then chat with who ever else clicked that same button on your web site. Your users can communicate, with each other, in real time. It’s a cool concept, and it takes chat one step further. It’s all happening with Apple-like chat bubbles, superimposed on top of your web site. For added decoration, you can customize your avatar and view everyone’s cursor. It you think about it, there are some neat applications for this – in particular for learning, training, and demos.
You can see a low-key demo (when I was there everyone was silent) on the Firefly web site. A much more chaotic, and thus more fun, demo was taking place on Dave Winer’s Scripting News page. Because this is not yet widely available, everyone can’t have it. But they are looking for some moderate to high-traffic sites to test their app.
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If there is a new app or gadget, or just news you want to know more about, let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net or via Twitter.