Text mode conferencing is one of the oldest forms of communications on the internet. You commonly know this as participating in a "chat room."

This form of communication has lasted as long has for three very good reasons:

1. It requires the least possible bandwidth necessary in order to do it. You don’t get any smaller in bandwidth usage than plain text.
2. Even if you have the slowest/crappiest internet connection, you can still participate in text chat. Heck, it even works on dialup.
3. It’s the easiest to use compared to any other mode of conferencing on the internet.

Why would you want to use text mode conferencing?

Other than just for the fun of it, if you find that with instant messaging the one-to-one isn’t enough, and you need to involve more people in the conversation, conferencing fits the bill nicely. Bear in mind that many businesses use this, so it’s not just personal use territory only. In particular, many customer service/help desk environments do employ the use of an in-house chat room so that the support team and techs can interact with each other easily without the need to chase around with phone calls and/or emails.

Ways you can do text chat conferencing

1. IRC

Requirements: Web browser or IRC chat client

If you want to create your own IRC channel, you must register it with a chat service like DALnet or GameSurge, then periodically login to it so it doesn’t get deleted.

To participate in an IRC channel, you can either use an IRC client like mIRC, or use a free web service to connect like Mibbit. Mibbit is definitely the easier of the two.

Participants do not need to register accounts in order to chat.

2. Meebo

Requirements: Web browser

Meebo allows any user to create a custom chat room at whim. You can then use it exclusively in Meebo or embed the chat into a web page if you have your own web site.

Like IRC, participants do not need to register an accounts in order to chat (but is recommended.)

3. Tinychat

Requirements: Web browser

This one is easiest of the bunch. Go to Tinychat, type in a name for your chat room, create it, invite others. It’s that simple. Rooms on Tinychat are designed to be disposable, so you don’t have to register anything in order to use it.

Similar services to Tinychat: Chatmaker, Chatroll

4. Yahoo! Messenger Chat Rooms

Requirements: Yahoo Messenger

In Y! Messenger you click Messenger then Yahoo! Chat then Join a Room…

At that point you see this window appear:

Simply pick where you want to go and go there. Other participants also have to have Y! Messenger and connect to the same room you’re in.

At present, Y! does not allow the creation of custom chat rooms or the ability to connect via the browser, both of which were previously available.

5. AIM Chat Rooms

Requirements: AIM client or browser

For many of us, AOL was the first place where we ever experienced a chat room. They are still out there and still available. In addition, you can create custom chat rooms at whim and invite your friends to join it easily. This to the best of my knowledge has always been part of the software.

In the latest edition of AIM, that being version 7, this feature is now called "Group Chat." To access it, click Menu then New Group Chat, or simply open your Buddy List and press ALT+C. At that point a chat invitation window will open. Type in the names you want to send the invites to, then click Send. The chat room then opens up.

Don’t feel like installing anything and would rather use the browser? No problem. Use AIM Express. After you login, click the small icon for a drop-down menu and create a group chat, like this:

What "saved" text mode conferencing?

In reality, text conferencing was never in any real danger of going away. It’s one of those methods of communications on the internet that goes up and down with popularity based on whatever people are using at the time to communicate with.

The first modern communications method that resurrected text conferencing (oddly enough) is video, as in live streaming video. I do this every week on Wednesday 8pm-10pm EST with PCMech LIVE. And it turns out that on most live streams, including ours, the way the audience interacts with the host is thru text conferencing.

The second method is smartphones. Being that text is universally compatible no matter what computer you use, smartphones definitely do count. On the live show I host there are participants who routinely connect using a phone to text-chat with. The technology is good enough, so people can and do use it.

Do you use text mode conferencing, a.k.a. chat rooms?

If so, do you host and/or participate? Do you find it easy or difficult to work with?

For those of you who send emails as text messages to cell phones, you’re well aware that you have to a) send in plain text only and b) count your characters to make sure you don’t trip the 140-character limit.

Setting email to send in plain text in easy. In popular email providers such as Yahoo! Mail there is an option right at the top to change from Rich Text to Plain Text. In Windows Live Mail, when composing a new email you can tap your ALT key, then click Format then Plain text, like this:

When it comes to counting characters it must be done manually. This is a pain in the neck to do. However there are two utilities you can use to somewhat automate this process.

Word Count Plus for Firefox

Site: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4718

This particularly works best if using web-based mail. Type your message. Highlight the entire message using CTRL+A (select all). Then click the Word Count Plus icon. It counts the words. Then hover to see how many characters were used, like this:

This is quick, effective and it works. You see exactly how many characters are used so you don’t go over the 140-character limit when sending an email as a text message to a cell phone.

Important note: This obviously does not take into consideration email that adds in text advertisements to the tail of messages you send out. Gmail does not tag outgoing mails with ads nor does Yahoo – but Hotmail does when using in the browser (but not with Windows Live Mail client).

Notepad++

Site: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

This is for those who don’t use Firefox but still want an easy way to count characters. Notepad++ is a text editor but it counts characters easily.

Open Notepad++. Type what you intend to send as an email in it. Press CTRL+A to select all.

Click TextFX, TextFX Tools, Word Count, like this:

A window will pop up after that:

What to pay attention to is the third line, Characters. That will tell you how many are in use. In this instance, I’m still okay because I’m at 137 which is just under 140.

Copy and paste your message from Notepad++ into your email and send.

Word Count Plus is obviously the easier of the two because it’s right in the browser and stays out of the way neatly when not using it. But for those using email programs, Notepad++ is just a quick hop to a text editor that counts characters quickly which for most people is faster than counting yourself.

YouTube (finally) put some profanity censoring in their text comment system after years of angry complaints from many, many users of the system.

The moment this went into effect there were people right on top of this:

Note the second comment above. Let it not be said that all YouTube "community members" are dumb. If you still want to see the profanity, you can.

Just uncheck the box for "Hide profanity in comments" by clicking "Options" next to Text Comments and it’s a done deal.

Why you would want to see the profanity crap I have no idea. But rest assured, YouTube is not outright denying you from seeing it, because that would be true censorship.

A really, really long time ago, people accessed their e-mail using text-based clients. One popular (said loosely) client was PINE. When I say text-based, I mean text-based. No GUI. No JavaScript. No images. No formatted fonts. No HTML. Nothing but text.

There are a smattering of people on the internet that to this day swear by PINE and absolutely will not use anything else. Why? Because it works. And it’s easy (as far as text-based apps go). Unfortunately PINE discontinued support a while ago.

However… the modern variant of PINE is Alpine. It comes from the same place the original PINE did, Washington University. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a Windows version. There’s also Mac OS X binaries in addition to the traditional source code, RedHat/Fedora RPM packages and Debian .deb packages. So no matter what OS you’re running, you can use Alpine.

Being that Alpine connects with IMAP enabled e-mail easily, some would say "Cool! Can I access Gmail with Alpine?"

Yes you can.

Here’s how using the Windows binary version:

When installing the application, choose to "Use local configuration file", like this:

Next, enter in your Personal Name (your name), your Gmail e-mail address, imap.gmail.com as the mail server, tick the option "This server is an IMAP server", your login name as you@gmail.com (your Gmail e-mail address) and the SMTP server as smtp.gmail.com.

After launching Alpine it will try to connect to the Gmail IMAP servers and fail (we haven’t set up the SSL connections yet). This may take up to a minute. Don’t get scared if you see the hourglass for a little while.

Looks like this (note the red bar).

From here we press S (Setup) then C (Config).

Use your arrow keys (remember, no mouse) and highlight User ID, then press Enter. Change this to your full Gmail e-mail address. Press Enter when done.

Use your arrow keys and highlight User Domain. Change to gmail.com.

Highlight SMTP Server (for sending). Change to smtp.gmail.com:587/tls.

Highlight Inbox Path and change to imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=you@gmail.com. Alpine will ask you what folder to use for INBOX. Just press Enter here to use "inbox" (this works).

Highlight Default Fcc (File carbon copy). Change this to Sent Mail. Case is important here.

Press E to Exit Setup, Y to save the changes then Q and Y to quit Alpine.

Restart Alpine.

On restart you will be immediately asked for your password. Use the password you use for your Gmail account. (Note: If you want the password saved, be sure to check "Preserve this password for future logins").

On the Main Menu, press I for the message index (your inbox). You should see all your mail now. To go back to the Main Menu, press O (letter O, not zero) then M.

Now we need to compose a new e-mail. To test this, compose a message to yourself.

From the Main Menu, press C. Type in your e-mail address next to To:. Press TAB three times and put in test mail as your subject line. Press TAB again, type something in the body of the e-mail ("test mail" for example).

Press CTRL-X to send. At the bottom you will be asked "Send message?" Press Y to send.

At this point you will be asked to enter in a password to send the e-mail out for SMTP server authentication (and again, you can optionally have it save the password for future use). Use your Gmail password.

In a few moments the mail will be sent and seen in your inbox shortly thereafter since you just sent a mail to yourself.

~ ~ ~

Yes, the setup is a pain to get working but once done it works like a champ.

This is a really long roundabout way of using e-mail, however bear in mind that e-mail worked primarily like this for years before GUI clients and web-based became the norm.

As mentioned earlier in this article, some people truly enjoy using e-mail this way. Or if you’re the type that wants to earn some easy "geek points", using PINE or Alpine is definitely worth bragging about for those that care about that sort of thing.

MS-DOS Editor is a DOS-based text editor that comes with 32-bit Windows XP Home and Professional (As well as virtually all other versions of Windows before it.)

Since Notepad can only handle small files; Editor is sometimes used as a substitute for Notepad. It is a Text User Interface; the color scheme of which is adjustable. Editor can edit files that are up to 65,279 lines and up to approximately 5MB in size. The editor can also open files in binary mode.

The window can be split down the middle into two panes. These can be used to view two files in a single window, or different parts of the same file. Windows has retained this program, and the program file has retained its .com file extension, from its original DOS version back in MS DOS 3.1; although in reality it is an .exe file.

There are 2 ways in which to access this program: The first is by typing “edit” into a command-line. The second, and the more convenient, is by creating an icon on the Desktop. Here’s how to do that:

1. Locate the file “Edit.com” in the folder

%systemroot%\Windows\System32

Where %systemroot% is your system drive. (Usually C:)

2. Right-click on the file and click on “Create Shortcut” to create a shortcut to it.

3. Drag & drop the shortcut to your desktop.

4. Right-click the shortcut icon, select “Properties” from the drop-down box, select the “Program” tab, and ensure that the “Close on Exit” check-box has a tick in it.

5. Click OK

Any time you need to use MS-DOS editor simply click on the Desktop shortcut and the program will activate. To close it click on the X in the right-hand corner or click on “Exit” in the file menu.

I’ll answer that question even before I start this article: Yes, you are. And you always have been since the first time you used text messaging on a mobile wireless network.

The reason you’re getting screwed is because those who are computer savvy even to the most basic degree understand that when you charge 20 cents for 140 bytes of data or less transferred, that’s nothing short of the rip-off of the century. More on that in a moment.

According to washingtonpost.com, all the major phone carriers deem that outside of the flat-rate monthly data plans, a text message costs 20 cents each time one is transferred.

Let’s examine that for a moment.

If you take a 140-character phrase and save it as a text file on your computer, you will see that text file is 140 bytes exactly. One byte per character.

Let’s say you live on your cell phone and send 500 text messages daily (yes that’s extreme but there are some crazy fools who actually send that much), with each being a full 140 bytes each. That’s 70,000 bytes daily or 68.4 kilobytes.

If you sent that much text messaging data every day for a whole month, that’s 2 megabytes of data. That’s it. Just 2. For the month.

You’re probably thinking "I can download more than that in a web browser in less than 5 minutes." That’s right.

Now realize that most people don’t get anywhere near 2 megabytes of plain old text data transferred per month. We’re not even talking binary transfers here, just text and text alone.

You’ve probably figured out by now that 140 bytes isn’t worth 20 cents no matter how you look at it. No way, no how. It’s an outright ridiculous price.

Consider the following (this is from the linked article above):

…600 text messages contain less data than a 1 minute phone call. It said that at 20 cents a text message, wireless carriers would collect $120 for 600 messages.

"Does $120 for the equivalent of one minute of voice seem reasonable?"

I personally don’t think that’s reasonable.

Do you?