Let's Surf the Web Together

When it comes to speech-based chat, Cahoots is not quite as robust as Firetalk. But it offers a comprehensive series of features, a few of which you won't get on Firetalk. Cahoots lets you make free voice calls to colleagues and friends, send instant messages, post notes at site "information centers," and participate in guided tours of the Web while speaking to other users.

Here's how it works. Users download the free software from the Cahoots site. Once you install Cahoots, a window appears beside your browser (the Cahoots Console) and lets you see which other Cahoots users are visiting the same Web page as you are. You then have the option of joining the active group text or voice chat. To initiate a private voice or text chat, to send an instant message, or to start a tour, just click on the name of the person you want to talk to and select the appropriate item from the pop-up menu.

The voice quality on Cahoots is every bit as good as on Firetalk, but Cahoots limits the number of participants in a voice chat to 10. If more than 10 users want to join a conversation, the service creates another "room" for the overflow. You can choose which room you want to enter, but if the chat session in your room of choice is at capacity, you'll have to wait for someone to leave.

Like Firetalk, Cahoots lets you initiate conversations with people you don't know, and it has a pretty nifty feature that helps you make smarter connections. You can find like-minded surfers by glancing at the list of people who are visiting a site when you are. Next to each user's name is an "affinity bar" that gauges how similar that surfer's interests are to yours. A dark-blue bar signifies that a user shares at least one of your interests. A light-blue bar means that the two of you have totally different likes and dislikes.

Another useful feature is Cahoots's ability to save transcripts of chats. Save transcripts as text files, and you can share them with other Cahoots users.

Analysis: Being in cahoots with Cahoots is definitely worth the effort.

Crowdburst (www.crowdburst.com)
overall rating ...
usability ....1/2

Two's company, and three's a crowd. But if the folks at CrowdBurst have their way, surfers will be moving through the Net in crowds of three, four, or more.

CrowdBurst is the latest entrant to the "chat-on-page" arena populated by the likes of Firetalk and Cahoots. But unlike those other applications, CrowdBurst doesn't require you to download any software. All you need in order to use the service is a browser. Once you've launched CrowdBurst, you'll need to register a user name and a password -- and then you're ready to join the crowd.

The one thing that really makes CrowdBurst stand out from the crowd is the "trails" feature. A trail is a saved surfing session, with added commentary from the trail's creator, that other users can follow at any time. Using trails is a great way to help people understand the logic by which you arrived at a site.

That said, CrowdBurst's approach to trails is a bit circuitous. You create a list of URLs either by typing in the addresses or by adding the pages as you surf along. In order to record your path, you have to toggle between your browser and the CrowdBurst trail tool, adding each page by hitting the "add current page" button. (Or, you can add a bunch of pages at once by using the "view history" command.)

Finding trails is also complicated. The only way to find a trail is to find a Web page that happens to be included in one. When you find such a page, you can choose to follow the trail by clicking on the trail name. Your browser will automatically go to the first site in the trail, and a pop-up window will appear with commentary from the trail's creator.

These shortcomings aside, CrowdBurst is a great tool for anyone who wants to lead people to specific resources on the Web without having to be online all the time.

Odigo (www.odigo.com)
overall rating ..1/2
usability ...

Odigo, which comes from the Greek word for "guide," was one of the first tools to merge instant messaging, voice and text chat-on-page, and temporary Web-page note posting into one application. It's also the most playful of the bunch. Sure, Odigo can be used for serious business, but there's something about the tool's slick, remote-control-like interface that has "13-year-old girl" (rather than "58-year-old CEO") written all over it.

Unlike many tools of its kind, Odigo is compatible with America Online's ICQ and Instant Messenger, so you can chat with all of your friends - even those who don't have Odigo. (Beware: AOL has been known to block users of other tools from chatting with Instant Messenger users.) There are some other nifty features, such as the ability to transfer files and urls right from the chat window.