Partychapp is a bot that relays a conversation to all of those that are connected to it. In addition to relaying the chat to all of your friends, it has some fun features built into it as well. There are two ways to set up your own Google Talk chat room with Partychapp.

Set Up a Chatroom with Your Web Browser

You can set up a chatroom directly from your browser if you log into Partychapp with your Google Account. Once you log in with your account, you’ll be taken back to the Partychapp web page, but you’ll see a button that says Create a new room. Click on the button, and you’ll get a simple form to create your new chat room.

The form is self-explanatory. Just pick the name for your chat room, decide whether or not you want it to be public or private, enter the email address of anyone you would like to invite to the room, and click Create!

When you sign into Google Talk, you will receive a chat request from the bot (it will be yourchatroomname@partychapp.appspotchat.com, where yourchatroomname is the name of your chat room). Accept the chat request, and start chatting away with the bot. As others accept the request from the bot, they will say everything you say to the bot.

Set Up a Chatroom By Chatting With The Bot

If you don’t feel like logging into Partychapp with your Google Account and creating the channel through the web form, you can set up a new chat room by just chatting directly with the bot. Just add yourchatroomname@partychapp.appspotchat.com to your buddy list and start chatting with the bot. Simple enough. You can invite others by sending the command /invite yourfriendsemail@gmail.com.

Here’s what Partychapp looks like in action:

Fun with the Partychapp Bot

Not only does Partychapp provide you with a chat bot, but the bot has many commands that provide some additional functionality. To see a list of all the commands, just type /help and you’ll get a list of commands. The output from /help looks like this:

List of commands:
* /leave - leave the room
* /list - show members of room
* /help - shows this
* /alias name - rename yourself to 'name'
* /score target - see the score of 'target' in plusplusbot
* /reasons target - see why target's score was changed
* /me - describe what you're doing in the third person
* /invite email1@foo.com, email2@bar.com ... - Invite a list of email addresses to this room
* /inviteonly - Set the room to invite-only
* /kick - Remove a user or invitation from this room
* /status - show what room you're in
* /summon  - summons a person in the room by sending them an email.
* /undo - undo the pluspluses and minusminuses from your last message
* /debug [sequenceIds|clear] - if you don't know what this does, you probably shouldn't use it
* /stats - return system stats
* /graph-score   ... - prints a link to a graph of the changes to up to three targets' scores.
* /snooze (20s|45m|1h|2d) - snooze for a specified amount of time in seconds, minutes, hours, or days.
* search and replace handler - use s/foo/bar to replace foo with bar
* plusplusbot: handles ++'s and −−'s
* Message echo@ to hear yourself talk
* Found a bug? Let us know: http://code.google.com/p/partychapp/issues/entry
* Follow us for announcements at http://twitter.com/partychat

If you’re wondering what’s up with the slashes in the commands, it’s borrowed from the command syntax for IRC. IRC is an old-school Internet chat system that has been around since 1988. Even today, IRC remains a popular form of instant communication online.

Probably the first command you’ll want to use is /alias. Just type /alias YourAlias to change your name as others will see it. You can use the /invite command I mentioned earlier to invite your buddies into the chatroom. The /inviteonly command toggles the chat room from invite-only to public.

If you’re wondering what plusplusbot is, works very much the same as plusplusbot on Twitter. If you like something, you add a ++ after it and if you dislike something, you add a −− after it. For example, if you type Partychapp++, the bot responds with [YourAlias] Partychapp++ [woot! now at 1]. If you type Partychapp++, the bot responds with [YourAlias] Partychapp−− [ouch! now at 0].

You can see the score for any word with the /score command. In this case, /score Partychapp, you get Partychapp: 0. You can also provide reasons along with your ++/−− commands. For example, if you type [YourAlias] Partychapp++ because it’s cool, you get [YourAlias] Partychapp++[woot! now at 1] because it’s cool. You can then list all the reasons for scores if you type /reasons Partychapp++. In this case, the output looks like:

Partychapp: 1
increment by youremail@gmail.com (Partychapp++)
decrement by youremail@gmail.com (Partychapp−−)
increment by youremail@gmail.com (Partychapp++ because it's cool)

Another cool feature the bot has is search and replace. To search and replace, you type s/foo/bar to replace foo with bar. For instance, if you type on one line Partychatt and the next line you type s/tt/pp the bot responds YourAlias meant Partychapp.

What’s really cool (if you’re a geek like me) is that the search/replace uses regular expressions. Regular expressions, although cryptic and difficult to master, provide an extremely powerful mechanism for the programmatic processing and manipulation of text. There are several unix utilities that make use of regular expressions, as well as many programming and scripting languages (Perl, PHP, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Python, and Ruby to name a few).

Partychapp is a great way to set up chat rooms with your friends. If you want to try it out, I’ve set one up called makeuseof. Just add makeuseof@partychapp.appspotchat.com to your Google Talk buddy list and start chatting away. If I’m logged into Google Talk, you just might run into me there.

Note: If you’re concerned about sharing your Gmail address with those that are already in the MakeUseOf chat room I’ve set up, do not use the bot. Your Gmail address will be announced when you enter the bot.

So what do you think of Partychapp in lieu of Google Talk’s missing chat rooms?

Before You Get Started

Before you decide to download Chrome OS, there are probably a few things I should tell you about it. It is in the very early stages of development, so there is still a lot of stuff that doesn’t work. In fact, it may not work for you at all.

You should also be made aware that this operating system is very simplistic by design, as it is intended for use on netbook computers. By definition, a netbook is a small and inexpensive laptop intended for very casual use such as web browsing and simple office tasks. When you launch Chrome OS, pretty much all you get is a web browser. Don’t be surprised if you go through all this and say to yourself, “I did all that work just to log into a freakin’ browser?”

Requirements

First of all, you will of course need a USB drive you can use to try it out. The disk image is 2,988,442,112 bytes, so you’ll probably need a 4GB thumb drive to be able to use it. If you have any files on your USB drive that you need, be sure to back them up to a safe place because this will wipe all the data from your USB drive. Consider yourself warned.

You will also need a computer that allows booting from a USB drive. You’ll need to instruct your computer’s BIOS to boot from the USB drive instead of the hard drive like it normally does. When you boot up your computer, it should provide you with information as to how to bring up a boot menu. On some machines it is the F8 key and others the F12 key or some other key.

If it all scrolls by too fast, some computers will allow you to pause the boot sequence by pressing the Pause key. That should give you all the time you need to read all that stuff on the screen to see if you can find out what the boot menu key is (if there is one). If you don’t see anything about a boot menu, you could also try editing your BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive. You may wish to consult your computer (or motherboard) manual on how to do this.

You will also need a little bit of luck. Chromium OS may or may not work on your computer hardware. I did successfully run it on two home-built frankenstein computers (with ASUS motherboards), but it did not successfully recognize the network adapter on my Dell laptop. All of this work may be for nothing, if it ends up that Chromium OS does not like your network adapter. Ah yes, I forgot to mention that you do also need a computer with a network adapter.

Finally, you’ll need to download the necessary files to put Chromium OS (that’s what the open source version of Google Chrome OS is called) onto your USB drive. I’ve packaged it all together in a torrent for you:

Download the Chromium OS for USB Torrent (Right-click and Save As)

You’ll need a good BitTorrent client like µTorrent to download it. If you’re new to BitTorrent, be sure to check out our Big Book of BitTorrent. You’ll learn more than you’ll ever want to know about it.

The torrent has a zip file that includes the disk image, as well as a Windows tool for putting the image onto a USB drive. The program you’ll use to create the Chrome OS USB boot disk is called Image Writer for Windows. It’s a nifty little tool for writing disk images, it’s free, and it’s open source.

You don’t need to download it seperately because I’ve already included it in the torrent. I just wanted to mention the good folks that developed the great application and send them some link love as well.

Installing Chromium OS to your USB Drive

Unzip chrome_os_usb.zip, and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. If you need a program to unzip the archive, you can download IZArc. If you get the warning below when you launch Image Writer, don’t sweat it. It’s looking for a floppy disk that’s not there.

Once you’ve got Image Writer running, click the folder icon and select the chrome_os.img file (it should be located in the same place where you extracted the zip file and launched Win32DiskImager.exe).

Connect your USB drive to your PC. If you have autorun enabled, you may want to wait a few seconds for your computer to do its thing. Just close whatever window may pop up. Next, click on the Device dropdown and select the drive letter that corresponds to your USB drive. Then, click Write and the program will commence writing the disk image to your USB drive.

Boot Up Chromium OS

You’re now ready to boot up Chromium OS! You can just leave the USB drive in your machine and reboot it. When the machine boots, press the boot menu key on your keyboard. Select your USB drive from the menu. In about 10 seconds or so, you should see the Chromium OS login screen.

Login with chronos and password. This will log you in as a local user. Once you log in, you should see what looks almost just like the Google Chrome browser. If you click on the Chrome sphere in the upper left corner, you should see a Google Accounts login page telling you to log into Welcome. Log in with your Google Account.

If you do not see this page and you get a browser page that says it could not find the page requested, then unfortunately luck is not on your side. It means that Chromium OS doesn’t like your network adapter. You could still however try it out in a virtual machine if you so desire. If you were able to succesfully log in, you should then see the application page.

As you can see, it is all in the cloud. All the applications you see on the app page bring up different webpages, and everything you do takes place within the browser. In my experience, although it did boot up relatively fast, the browser tends to run a bit slow and is a bit jumpy. Although the calculator and notepad launch properly in little popover windows, the apps don’t work and nothing loads into the windows at all.

The To-do List application doesn’t work either, and you get a Google.com account login page. Note, this is not the same as a Google Accounts login so you won’t be able to log in with your Google Account. The Google.com login page is only for Google employees. The Contacts application brings up a Google Talk gadget that doesn’t appear to work.

As I said earlier, a lot of the stuff isn’t working right. You’ll also see right at the top of the application page a message that says UI under development. Designs are subject to change.

All the other applications are simply links to webpages. One thing that I found rather amusing is that when you click on the Hotmail icon, it takes you to Gmail. However, the Yahoo! Mail icon does indeed bring you to the Yahoo! Mail login page. I suppose Google likes Yahoo! better than they do Microsoft.

So what do you think of Chrome OS? Do you think it is the netbook operating system of the future?

On the font page, you’ll see an interesting comparison for the traffic that has taken place on pages over the course of the past month.  For instance, when I first visited Wikirank, they had a comparison to see who is the most popular on Wikipedia among John, Paul, George or Ringo.

You can also search for whatever topic you like.  As you begin to type into the search bar, you will see a list of article pages appear in a dropdown.  Just select the page you want from the dropdown when you see the page you’re looking for.

When you are viewing the visitor statistics for a particular Wikipedia article, you can easily add new topics to compare the traffic between multiple articles.  I found it interesting that the Linux Wikipedia page is more popular than the Windows and OS X pages.

What do you think of Wikirank?

If you want to create a conference room without your computer, you can just dial (605) 475-8515 (USA phone number) and press 0 to create a new conference room. Be sure to write down the conference room number, because anyone you want to join will need to use it to enter.

If you want to create a conference room with your computer, just visit the Gizmo5 free conference call setup page. You enter your email address into the form, and then you will be brought to a page with your conference number. You will also receive an email with your conference number.

Once you have your conference room number, just give it to those you wish to attend along with the (605) 475-8515 dial-in number. When they call the dial-in number, they will be prompted for the conference room number. They can then enter the conference room number you gave them.

That’s all there is to it, and you can do it without even signing up for an account. However, if you’re outside of the USA or you don’t have an unlimited long-distance calling plan, you will need to sign up for a Gizmo5 account if you want to use the service without having to pay long distance charges.

Just download the Gizmo5 client and sign up for a free account.  They have clients available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Once you’ve installed the Gizmo5 client, you can launch it and create a free account right from the application.

Once you’ve installed Gizmo5 and logged into your account, just dial CONFERENCE. Once you’re connected, click the Dialpad tab and then enter the conference room number.  You’ll be connected to the conference room and will be ready to chat with the others as they join.

What free conference calling services do you use? Are you aware of any other free sites to setup instant conference calls? Let us know in comments!

According to the Microsoft Expression Web blog, the versions of Internet Explorer made available within SuperPreview will depend on which version of IE you have installed on your system:

If you’re a web developer that’s been holding off on installing IE 7 because you won’t be able to preview your sites in IE 6, you’ll no longer have to worry about making the upgrade.  You can upgrade to IE 7 and still view pages in IE 6 with SuperPreview.

When you load a page into SuperPreview, you’ll see a side-by-side comparison.  You can zoom in as far as 500% and do a near pixel-by-pixel comparison, or zoom out as far as 21%.  When you scroll, the scrolling is synchronized across browsers, so you see exactly what appears within the same coordinates at the same time.

You can also click on and drag on the rulers to place markers across the page to get an easy view on how page elements are aligned within the different browsers.  Although the free version only allows you to compare IE browsers, it does have an image comparison you can use to compare a browser screenshot.  If you have a nice image capture that allows you to take screenshots of frames within applications (such as Jing), screenshots can provide a good comparison.

According to the Webdesigner Depot story about SuperPreview, the full version will include support for other non-IE browsers (Firefox, Safari, etc.).  Webdesigner Depot also reports the application will eventually support multiple browser sizes.  The beta preview only allows you to see what sites will look like in a browser at a 1024×768 resolution.

What free tools do you use to perform cross-browser comparisons? Are you familiare with any other tools to preview sites in different versions of IE?

CallsBlocker is a great free Blackberry call blocking software written by Fabian Heuwieser that allows you to block unwanted calls a few different ways. In the application screen, you can enter individual numbers you want to block and block numbers with certain area codes (such as 800, 888, 866, etc.). There are also options to block private, unknown, and withheld numbers.

You can also block numbers from your contact list.

And finally, you can block numbers from your call log as well.

Just visit the CallsBlocker download page, and you can send it to your BlackBerry via SMS or email. You can also download it to your PC and then transfer it to your phone with a data cable.

Although the product page states the minimum requirements are a BlackBerry Storm, Berry Reporter confirmed with Fabian that it should work on all the devices, not just the Storm. Thomas Magsaysay, the author of the Berry Reporter article confirmed first-hand that it does work on a BlackBerry Bold.

What do you think of CallsBlocker? Do you know of any other free tool to block calls on Blackberry?

Installing Firebug on IE, Safari, Chrome or Opera

Firebug Lite makes it possible to install Firebug into any web browser! You should be able to use Firebug with Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Chrome, and any other browser that supports JavaScript. Firebug Lite is written in JavaScript, so you can include it on a webpage with the following code:

<script type='text/javascript'

     src='http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.2/firebug-lite-compressed.js'></script>

Or even better you can use this bookmarklet:

Firebug Lite

Firebug Lite provides you with the same inspections capability that regular Firebug does. You can click the Inspect button and hover over sections of the page to view the computed style and DOM properties for the tag selected.

The Inspect button functionality does seem to have some issues, so another way to inspect elements is to navigate the HTML tree. To do that, click the + signs on the tree view to expand the HTML, and when you see the element you want to inspect, click on the line of code for it in the HTML. On the right side, you can view the computed style and the DOM (Document Object Model) properties for the element.

Firebug Lite also has the JavaScript console, which allows you to execute JavaScript. You can write one line at a time, or in the expanded view you can write many lines at once and then run the code.

Although you cannot edit the CSS for the highlighted element, Firebug Lite does provide a mechanism for editing CSS. It is somewhat of a “CSS console” for lack of a better term, where you can write your own CSS code and see what the results will look like.

Of course, with a name like Firebug Lite you can’t expect it to have all of the features of Firebug. Unfortunately, it does not include any JavaScript debugging (I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be to write a JavaScript debugger in Javascript). Unfortunately, you’re still stuck with whatever JavaScript debugging tools you can find for your browser. It does at least provide you with the convenience of being able to easily view the code for script files that were loaded in the page.

Firebug Lite also lacks the layout features in regular Firebug, where it shows you the coordinates for the element being inspected, as well as the padding, border size, and margins.

All in all it is better to have Firebug Lite for other browsers than no Firebug at all. If you are trying to debug layout and viewing issues in other browsers, it is definitely a nice tool to try out.

Have you ever used Firebug Lite? Did you use Firebug on IE, Safari, Chrome or Opera before? If so, what are your favorite features?

You can download LEGO Digital Designer for both Mac OS X and Windows. When you start it up, you’ll see that you have the option to build virtual lego designs using factory, mindstorms, or creator. For each of the three options, you can choose to use a starter design, free build from scratch, or open a model you’ve previously saved.

To start designing, you just select bricks from the brick palette and start placing them down on the surface with your mouse. The bricks are grouped together by type, so you can expand a group and then select the type and color of brick you want to use. Then just place it wherever you would like.

Placing the bricks can be a little tricky at times. Sometimes the bricks just don’t seem to go where you want them to go. To help get things into the right place, you can move the view around with the right mouse button.

Just press and hold down the right mouse button, and then move the mouse around to rotate the view. If the design has fallen off the screen after you’ve rotated it, you can hold the shift key down while you also hold down the right mouse button. This allows you to move the entire viewport up, down, left, and right.

There are a number of selection tools available in the toolbox.

• Single Selection tool ““ Select a single brick at a time
• Multiple Selection tool ““ Select multiple bricks at a time
• Connected Selection tool ““ Select a single brick, and all bricks connected to it will be selected as well
• Color Selection tool ““ Select all bricks of the same color of the brick selected
• Shape Selection tool ““ Select all bricks that have the same shape of the brick selected
• Color and Shape Selection tool ““ Select bricks that are the same color and shape of the brick selected

There is also a LEGO Factory Gallery, where you can see designs that others have made and uploaded. You can download the designs and customize them any way you want. All of the designs in the gallery are free to download.

Download the LEGO Digital Designer to build virtual legos today, and simulate all your childhood memories!