Category: Geeks r Us
So. I was talking to dave, and he pointed me in the direction of bitwise. bitwise is your standard im client. It may not sound exciting at first, but.. let's see. really accessible interface, customizable interface, voice chat, file transfer, offline messages can be e-mailed to you, and a lot more. It doesn't seem to have a whole ton of users, but.. I must say it is definetly something. I believe the site is www.bitwiseim.com. go check it out
Yes, it is www.bitwiseim.com. It's totally free (no adware, spies, etc); it's supported by donations and sales of Bitwise Professional. It's the lightest im client I've yet used, in terms of cpu cycles. The voice chat is probably the most customizible I've yet seen (since Speak Freely). It can take a bit of tweeking to get the audio set up right, but, once you do, it's lovely! Let's see... All conversations, file xfers, etc are said to be strongly encrypted. There's all kinds of logging, chatroom, white board, and file sharing features. That's about it for now. Go have a look, and welcome to bitwise!
-Dave
In the "support" area on the Bitwise web site, there is a set of message boards, similar in functioning to these. To register, one must enter a confirmation code of a form not visible to JAWS. On the registration link, there is a 'send-mail' link, set up specifically for blind and visually-impaired users. I w4rote to this address, specifying what I'd like for a user name. Within an hour, I had a return mail from the web site administrator, telling me the account is ready. Now, that's what I call "S E R V I C E"! I don't know how many times I've written to Yahoo, and never gotten so much as a bot-generated "Thanks for your note", type response.
it certainly sounds like good service. I think I might sign up for an acount.
sounds good. i don't suppose one can resume file transfers? Sam
Keep in mind: the code I spoke of in my previous refers only to the web bbs system. to build an account and use the messaging client, one needs no code. Regarding whether one can resume a broken file transfer, I don't know.
I think you can resume your downloads. I think I saw it in the list of features, but I'm not sure.
its cookies and i am going to check it out
ok. this settles it. you should all join. I just had like a half an hour chat with the guy who runs it. I mean. what other service is gonna have an admin who talks to you? lol. he's totally awesome. Kevin rules!
Liam: I'm glad that chatting with Bitwise Kevin was as good for you as it was for me! That said, I beg y'all to join Bitwise!
Sweet! I'm signing up, too. :P
man! the thing is awesome! lolol, well i love it so far...
sam just to give you a definite answer to the question you asked about being able to resume file transfers, you assume incorrectly. you most assuredly can. not only is it listed as a feature but i have actually seen it in opporation. msn could certainly learn a thing or 2 from this program!
hmm, no, a bunch of things...
Liam says: "I mean. what other service is gonna have an admin who talks
to you?" ... Ahem. Anyway. Off to go check it out.
I'm ChrisN should anyone wish to add me. I'll be there as long as it's interesting.
Now, if only Bitwise IM could get around routers as Skype apparently can (applies only to voice chat and group conference).
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. When I get back on my broadband connection, I'll be sure to check it out!
PNL: Why wait? It should work well, even with a dialdown connection.
-Dave
Because my transfer rates r about 6kbps right now. I'll be back on the broadband connection soon anyway. Besides, this gives me more time to be on HF.
Got it, looks great. I don't like however that JAWS doesn't read the messages immediately. Any scripters around here can do something about that?
I don't think you need scripts; setting screen echo to "all" will give you automatic reading of new text. You could get it a little finer by using the frame manager and setting a "NewTextEvent". Let's try it!
The above assumes a version of JFW >= 5.0.
-Dave
Version 7.1 is released, as of 19-December.
Among the changes from 0.6, is a re-working of the voice chat system. The release note indicates that users will no longer have to manually configure firewalls and/or routers to make voice chat work. This is a welcome development.
Check out the changelog and other stuff at http://www.bitwiseim.com.
Cheers,
-Dave H