Another great example of the way that Web 2.0 has advanced our browser-based experience can be seen in the realm of chat. Meebo is a great example of a company that has taken web-based chat to new levels. We thought it would be so useful that we put it as a default bookmark in the Splashtop browser. Meebo allows you to do many of the same things that your standard application-based IM client does through the web browser. It can work like a single IM client for AIM, Gtalk, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN or you can register, create a Meebo ID and see/use all of them at once. This is similar to the very popular Trillion application without the application. It all happens right there in the browser. The user experience is excellent.
Meebo also has a feature called Meebo Rooms where you can create custom chat rooms on your web site and share images, links and even video. This can really take the whole chat room concept to a new level as you can place a room right on your MySpace page or blog. In addition, you can find many rooms on a variety of subjects. Here’s an image of Meebo rooms that was on Techcrunch:
One thing I love, in particular, about Meebo is that they have an iPhone version of their service that allows you to chat right from your iPhone. This was a feature that was missing from iPhone V1. Until they bring iChat into the iPhone, I’m a sold Meebo iPhone user. Here’s an image of the Meebo iPhone interface from Gizmodo:
Another company in this space is ebuddy. Ebuddy seems to do more with file sharing and, in my opinion, the interface is much cleaner. Ebuddy pops out a browser window so that the experience feels more traditional application oriented.
Whichever web-based chat application you utilize, they both allow you to login and chat from anywhere including Splashtop!
