• Chatango (http://chatango.com/) A very cool private instant messenger and group chat application that you can add to almost any Web page (simply by copying the code given to you) or to your Facebook page (automatically). It was used by the 2008 Computers and Writing Online conference for live chat with presenters. Check it out on my home page at http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jwalker (scroll WAY to the bottom of the page--yes, I hid it!). One warning: I've gotten some strange, unwanted messages occasionally, but they're easy to ignore. [Posted by Janice Walker 8 March 2008]. 

• CommentPress, http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/ According to the Web site, this open-source software from the Institute for the Future of the Book is a "theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text. Annotate, gloss, workshop, debate: with CommentPress you can do all of these things on a finer-grained level, turning a document into a conversation. It can be applied to a fixed document (paper/essay/book etc.) or to a running blog. This site is presented in "document" mode." [Posted 16 March 2008] 

• Quick Topic  "For any quick group discussion, use QuickTopic free message boards instead of just email.Your messages will be in a private central place. Your friends can participate by email or use the web forum, because QuickTopic's super-easy web message boards let you get and post messages by email. Use it on your web site too." [Posted 4 Nov. 2006]. 

• Twitter, http://twitter.com/ "A service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"  When one posts in Twitter, it's referred to as a "tweet," and the @name feature is to indicate direct responses (like the old to<name> feature in MOOs).  I'm new to Twitter, and I refuse to sign up to use it on my cell phone (since I have limited SMS capability), but some stalwarts are planning on twittering from the CCCC 2009 conference, so we'll see how it goes!  Oh, yeah, I'm @janicewalker if you're a twitter-er! [Posted 2 March 2009].

• Yahoo!Groups.com Yahoo!Groups offers free list creation and management to just about anyone, from what I can tell. Currently, many members of the now-deceased ACW-L list or conversing using an Yahoo!Group mailing list. Check out the TechRhet list. I've also created my own list, CCCCStyle, to discuss proposed guidelines for academic e-publications. Members may subscribe, post, read, and unsubscribe using their regular email clients, or they may participate through the Web-based site. The Web site also offers file sharing, linking capabilities, file archiving, and more. Very nice and easy to use. However, the reason I have given this site 4-1/2 stars instead of 5 are because a) Web-based subscription requires that users give demographic data about themselves. So far, I haven't experienced any spam as a result, but many people are uncomfortable with being required to submit personal information, and requiring students to submit personal information could be problematic. Of course, you can still participate in the discussion list without providing this information by using the email option to subscribe to the list, but you lose the functionality of the file sharing, etc. available on the list Web site; and b) appended to each message posted (and received) by all subscribers is an advertisement. For the most part, the ads are relatively unobtrusive and are not for any products that might be seriously problematic. However, a frequent advertisement is for yet another Visa card.... All of us are probably already inundated with easy credit offers, but I'm not sure I want to provide yet another such message to my students (many of whom are already starting on a lifelong path of over-indebtedness!). Nonetheless, egroups is easy-to-use, easy to manage, and offers some really useful Web-based functionality not available through list software such as listproc, listserv, and majordomo. I'm going to continue to use it--albeit selectively. [Posted 19 Dec. 2001].

I’ve been using Yahoo! Groups with my classes for discussion postings for about 5 years now. At first, there was a problem with advertising spam to students, but that doesn’t seem to be as big a problem anymore (even though there is still advertising appended to each message posted). I like that my students can choose to post and receive messages from any email account they prefer, and that I can access the messages online so I don’t have to save them in my email inbox to answer questions about who posted what/when/etc. I don’t choose to use the Web interface for reading or sending posts, however. One problem I have found with the groups, however, is that, even though students can use it with any email account, the subscription information makes students THINK they have to have a Yahoo! Email account (they don’t). Nonetheless, many students sign up for it because they think it is required. [Posted 4 Nov. 2006].