« Turnabout is fair(-use) play | Main | Technology Transformations for the Base of the Pyramid by Al Hammond »

DC XO Chat Server

Join OLPC mesh activities
Join local activities!
So, after xochat went into deep hibernation (though it's back to stay and has its own regional servers), Wayan asked for friends to chat with:
XO laptop owners need more jabber servers to mesh network on. Every time I look at my empty neighborhood view I am sad. Yet I am not geek enough to run a jabber server solo. I need the help of a jabber expert to set one up for DC.

The super nice folks at Obscure.org set up a jabber server for the DC area, and there are many other community jabber servers listed at Laptop.org wiki list of community jabber servers. Any one server can only handle up to ~150 users at a time, so please choose your community's server (if your community doesn't have one, try setting one up, or contacting Harper Reed of XOChat.org for an XOChat regional server)

olpc mesh
Find friends and shared activites
This means that you can use it to chat (or share other activities like write or browse!) with other XO users whenever you're connected to the Internet, instead of waiting until they're in range to interact via the mesh.

It takes a few seconds to set up via the sugar control panel, and works amazingly well. The process is documented over in the OLPCNews forums, and I've included the short-and-sweet instructions in the full article (click below).

Jabber servers can get overwhelmed by too many users, so make sure you connect to one that's near to you (or set up your own Jabber server for your local OLPC users group!) . If you're in DC however, this is a call to action to sign on to dc.olpc.obscure.org, share chat activities and create some online meshy XO community love! Setup instructions, server information for the rest of the world, and some tips and tricks after the jump.

olpc learning club
Time to local mesh XOs
  1. Load up a terminal session
  2. type sugar-control-panel -g jabber
    (this shows you the current setting)
  3. type sugar-control-panel -s jabber jabberserver.example.com
    (this sets it to your new jabber server. DC's server is dc.olpc.obscure.org . If you're not in DC, check out the Laptop.org wiki list of community jabber servers or the XOChat list
  4. Go back to the "mesh" view by pressing the ring button
  5. Other XO icons should pop up if anyone's online!

Don't forget to fix the chat bug if you've upgraded since the last time you fixed it:


su
cd /usr/share/activities/Chat.activity/
mv chat.py chat.py.old
wget http://dev.laptop.org/~morgan/chat.py

Where next?

There's some great ideas on XO chatting going on in the OLPC Forums, like recurring, scheduled chats and a Who's who list to link XO handles to people. Some interesting ideas for using the mesh that I've seen on the general xochat.org server are from the basic group chats to a public quote-file maintained by a shared Write activity. What's your innovative idea for using the XO jabber/mesh system?

Posted by Jon on June 30, 2008 10:22 AM |

digg this!digg this del.icio.usdel.icio.us redditreddit slashdot bookmarkSlashdot StumbleUpon Stumble It!

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.griffjon.com/journal/MT/mt-trackback.cgi/517

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)