Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Lots of chatter at Organic today about Gabbly, a really interesting embedded chat widget that can be instantly deployed on any webpage.   Just add "gabbly.com/" in front of any URL, and it opens an IM-style chat box on the page. 

For example, clicking on http://gabbly.com/threeminds.organic.com allows you to chat in real time with any other users also using the gabbly interface.

At first blush, it seemed like a great collaboration tool for a firm like Organic, particularly for interoffice creative reviews.  But we learned that Gabbly publishes a RSS feed of any transcripts from the conversation- no word on how long these are kept.  Not the best way to conduct a site critique of a potential client.

One alternative - IE 5.0 and later offer a little-used Discussions Toolbar feature, which "allows you and other people to insert remarks into a Web page. The discussions are threaded; that is, replies to a discussion remark are nested directly under it. You can have multiple discussions in progress simultaneously."   The feature is supported by a separate Discussion Server which you theoretically be secured.    In the meantime, give Gabbly a try.  (thanks to Chris Valley for the tip and Tomas Roldan for the IE update, image credit Lis).

Misha Cornes