[SOLVED] Looking for chat software

I am looking for a program similar to one that Skype had a year or so back - or was it 5 or more back??? It is for live chatting with a group. There is a moderator who calls the group together at a certain time and who controls the 'chat' info as it is entered by the people in the group. It would be nice if this program is FREE! I think Skype used to have 'discussion groups' and 'Marketing Groups' or for 'Instruction or Tutorials' whereby one could pass info around in live time with 10 + others in the 'room'. Anyone know of a good one?

Uh... IRC?

Damn, back to school now

Thanks so much Fire cat........... hope you had a good day at school today.

I have looked at several IRC sites and feel that mIRC looks like the best. I have never had the need or used IRC before so not sure how it works. I have read up on Wik but so much jargon!

I have Clients ......... say 10/20 at a time that I want to have on line at one time, maybe for 4 hours or so. I need for them to be in the 'room' so I can text them information as it is fed to me. It needs to be a private room and I need to be in control of the input and 'chat' - do you think mIRC is good for these requirements?

I'd recommend MS Office Communicator. It has multiple functions as well.

Thanks Adama - I was looking at the Google 'chat' too - I will look at MS Office - has to be something easy that my Clients can click on to as well.

Pidgin is another free chat client worth a look - http://www.pidgin.im/

Supported chat networks:

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• IRC
• MSN
• MXit
• MySpaceIM
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

Portable version also available http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/pidgin_portable

Pidgin is a good little app, it's free and has lots of options for configuring it the way you want.

I used Mirc way, way back when windows 95 was still about.
Anyway I recall you could set up your own room for people to access. You'd give it a name and away you'd go.
I used to have a book on Mirc but I'm afraid the Dodo took it with it to extinction.

Thanks Nibi - I have loads to try out now so I think I will go see how I show this problem as solved. Have a good weekend.

Thanks very much for all that info Kiti - enjoy a nice weekend.............