Umbrella 2007: Managing New Technologies: The Challenge Of Web 2.0: Gabbly Chat Service

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Gabbly

Gabbly is a Web-based chat facility, which can be used from a Web browser; no additional software has to be installed.

Access to Gabbly is provided on the workshop session at the Umbrella 2007 conference Web site in order for the service to be evaluated by workshop participants.

Chat Facility

A Gabbly chat room is available for use during the workshop.

Please note that this service may be removed after the workshop.

Risk Assessment

Please note the following issues about use of Gabbly:

Gabbly is provided by an externally-hosted service with whom there are no contractual agreements. There is a danger that the company may not be sustainable or could change its usage conditions.
Anybody can join in the chat discussions.
A record of the chat discussions could potentially be held by the remote organisation.
Gabbly is an AJAX application and there may be issues about the accessibility of the service.
Information on the numbers and characteristics of the Gabbly user community seem to indicate that it is a new service and may not have sufficient momemtum to provide a stable and suatainable service.

The response to these risks is given below.

Gabbly will be used as an experiment and users will be notified of the risks regarding the sustainability of the software.
Participants will be informed that the service should only be used for information which can be read by anybody.
Information on potential accessibility concerns will be flagged. In addition links to a full screen version will be provided and information on Gabbly browser extensions will be provided.