Talking with Other People
Chatting is one reason many people get on the Internet in the first place; communicating
with people from all over the world can be a pretty compelling experience. WebTV
currently offers two forms of chat: IRC and HTML.
IRC Chat
IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It's a form of "live" chat, in that when you're
in a "room" (or channel), you will see the text messages being typed by people
immediately as they send them–even if there are hundreds of people in the room.
It can make you dizzy, it moves very quickly, but the speed also engenders rapidfire
communication, and you can talk privately with other individual chatters as well.
To access IRC Chat from the WebTV Home page, click Community on the sidebar,
then click Chat.
For much more information on how to use IRC chat with WebTV, click here.
HTML Chat
HTML chat is slower paced (not necessarily a bad thing), in that the screen has
to be refreshed to show new messages, either "manually" or automatically at preset
time intervals. One thing people like a lot about HTML-based chat is many of them
allow you to use HTML codes to change the color, size, and style of your text,
and in some cases include a picture next to your messages.
Instant Messaging?
Unfortunately, to this point there is no form of true instant messaging for
WebTV. Because no WebTV terminal supports Java, or download third-party software,
products like ICQ and AOL IM will not work.
There has been some talk in the press about Microsoft Messaging coming to "everything,"
from digital cell phones to pagers to WebTV, at this point there's no particular
reason to expect that to happen anytime soon.
Where Are the Chat Rooms Already??
Here are quite a few.
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