Half an hour ago I wanted to chat with a colleague of mine. I’m not that much into chatting, but into moving all and everything to Google Apps, so I’m on Google Talk (on my mobile as well), but my colleague is registered with Skype and MSN.

Bad luck, maybe hours of installation work ahead (I’m using a Thin Client which normally reverts to its clean boot settings on each power-up – keeping out stray viruses), tedious efforts to bar SuperChat applications from damaging the VOIP client built into my Nokia E90, forgotten passwords and other chores ahead 😦

For immediate anonymous chats, there’s a quick solution: Just add Google Chatback to your website. Chats are anonymous, but they’re not public, i.e. I’ll receive a separate window for each user. So they’re quite safe, unless someone successfully pretends to be my daughter, inquiring about my credit card details.

This one uses iframes, but the badge comes in customizable flavors that don’t require iframes. Provided your mailer program sends html you can even include the chatback badge in your mails. Sadly enough, Google Mail does not allow html in your signature, so you’d have to cut-and-paste each time again.

🙂