userplane

The Userplane applications for online communities is a very interesting concept. I like the idea of creating open applications that can be dropped into websites. This has been a trend for online developers and a good one.

I am specifically talking about the Webchat 2 app that they have out. It has an instant install which is a good way for a fairly quick deployment on the site. The application is free to use but is ad driven. It is nice to see that the advertisement isn’t intrusive as so many ‘free’ applications are these days. They also offer a version where the ads can be taken out but you have to pay.

After doing an installation, the process is pretty straight forward. You quickly have a pop up webchat complete with Profiles, Webcams, etc. A robust chat.

For our needs, the integrated minichat are going to be best suited. To make the chat more fluid it needs to be part of the website and not a popup application. At this point, we are still working on adding this feature. Hopefully we can get it integrated into the site. This would serve most sites better.