Maybe this is IMHO, I was lookin for a way to chat instantly online to a friend at university. Instant messengers that have to be installed like MSM aren’t any good in university as they can’t be installed on the library computers. I use the instant chat at Virginstudent.com but its buggy as hell and often crashes everything and takes waaayyy too long to restart. Any alternatives?
It’s a browser-based CGI-powered chatroom that requires no software installed, and allows for the creation of private rooms. I used to be an admin there, and did some script development for them.
ICQ’s ICQ2Go (Java applet & popup) is very good for normal 1-to-1 chatting. It should also be possible to chat with AIM users since they both use the same network, but I haven’t tried this, being primarily an ICQ user.
For 1-to-many chatting IRC is best (imho) and there are many sites offering access to different irc networks and their channels via CGI:IRC or the like. A good one is mouselike.org which allows connections to large number of irc servers on various nets.