Astute users may have noticed that we very quietly rolled out a new feature last week: Hab.la now works directly with your existing Google Talk account. Here’s how to add Google Talk to Hab.la.

First, log in to Hab.la and go to the account settings panel. You’ll notice a new section for “Other Chat Networks”.

Click on the “Google Talk” link and add your Gmail address. Then press “Save.”

GTalk will now show up as active.

Now log in to Google Talk. Hab.la will send you some chat invitations over the next few minutes. Approve each one by clicking “yes.”

That’s it. Now, when you’re signed in to Google Talk, visitors to your web site will be able to chat with exactly as they can with your regular Hab.la account. In addition, any other Jabber-based chat network that supports the server-to-server protocol (“S2S”) will work in the exact same manner.

We’re working on connecting more big chat networks with Hab.la, but each one has its own quirks. Look for more options in the coming months.

Lately it seems like my main contribution to Hab.la is fixing bugs. It’s definitely not sexy, but someone has to do it.

Today I finally fixed an obscure memory leak. Pretty much the only clue we had is that, after several weeks of running, the Hab.la server would use up all available memory. It took hours and hours and hours to track down the source, and then the fix turned out to be just two lines of code. (All the coders reading this are nodding their heads right now…)

At any rate, the fix is in. This should slightly improve stability, and maybe even make Hab.la a hair faster. But most likely, you’ll never notice.

Now it’s back to work on a far more exciting feature.

A few of our users have requested that we provide another port to access hab.la on. We actually implemented the code mid last week, but didn’t push it to production until today.

Corporate friends you can now access the hab.la Jabber server on port 21. So, your server configuration should look like:

username: user@hab.la

password: _ you should know this _

server: hab.la

port: 21

Let me know if you need further instructions.

I’ll leave you with a few quotes from our users:

“I’m impressed - I didn’t think after using 37Signals apps anything would impress me. But you guys did a good job on this.” - Anonymous

“This is just exactly What I needed . Plugoo was flash based and too heavy. Great Job!” - Michel, France , Marseille

“It’s a great way to interact with other people on web pages.” - Anonymous

“Thanks very much for putting the time into this. its very easy to use and its much better for people that don’t need all those complicated chat systems. As soon as I put it up, I had users asking questions all day it really helped me improve the site, because I got to talk to customers on the website directly. our customers are people who don’t use computers too often so its very simple for them to use.” - Dentfix.com

“its a real cool function.. better than a java chat on the website… so i can use my pidgin to chat directly if a user visits my website… thx for this great tool” - Moff, http://houserocker.tk

I think I’ll make a tradition of occasionally posting some of the feedback from our feedback form. (if you include a link, and your comment doesn’t look like obvious spam, I’ll try to include it) Thanks for your support guys, your feedback is what keeps Hab.la moving :-)

Let us know what you think

The big update for today is opening the Jabber client when a user visits the page, rather than opening it when the user opens a chat box. The advantages boil down to:

• This greatly simplifies the process of identifying whether an operator is available.
• Operators can initiate chat with web users.
• Uhhm .. that's all I've got.

At some point we may want to add some kind of privacy control for web users who do not want operators to initiate chat. Maybe we could have some kind of cookie that prevents hab.la from opening the Jabber session unless you specifically ask it to.

Also, all these Jabber streams may cause a performance issue at some point, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The big update for today is opening the Jabber client when a user visits the page, rather than opening it when the user opens a chat box. The advantages boil down to:

• This greatly simplifies the process of identifying whether an operator is available.
• Operators can initiate chat with web users.
• Uhhm .. that's all I've got.

At some point we may want to add some kind of privacy control for web users who do not want operators to initiate chat. Maybe we could have some kind of cookie that prevents hab.la from opening the Jabber session unless you specifically ask it to.

Also, all these Jabber streams may cause a performance issue at some point, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.