We set up a public chat for this blog last week. We weren't really sure how many people would turn up or what we would talk about, but it's been a good experiment and I believe demonstrates the viability of the public chat concept.

We started off just a few minutes before uploading the public beta...

[8.11.2006 12:11:06] Jaanus Kase says: hi
[8.11.2006 12:11:14] Jaanus Kase says: this is gonna be the blog/publicchat chat
[8.11.2006 12:11:43] Nicola Riordan says: excellent
[8.11.2006 12:12:29] Nicola Riordan has been promoted to chat host
[8.11.2006 12:12:31] stephanie robesky has been promoted to chat host
[8.11.2006 12:12:43] Jaanus Kase says: youll both be hosts and help me keep an eye on things here.

Then people started showing up, often saying that they like the new version. Which is always nice to hear.

[8.11.2006 14:31:48] Thomas Guinee says: Props to the developers of Skype! Very nice new UI and functions
[8.11.2006 14:35:54] Jaanus Kase says: thanks
[8.11.2006 14:41:20] Thomas Guinee says: Some little celebration at Slype HQ for hitting the 3.0 status?
[8.11.2006 14:42:23] Nicola Riordan says: Absolutely
[8.11.2006 14:42:44] Thomas Guinee says:
[8.11.2006 15:00:17] Ray Booysen says: in there like a bear
[8.11.2006 15:00:22] Ray Booysen says: Love the new interface

As it often happens with betas, we had some bugs around generating the chat promote badges from non-English versions. That got fixed quickly. Just as a reminder, see this page about how to give us feedback and report problems. While the chat is a good channel for that, the staff can't hang around there all day and so it's not an "official" reporting channel.

[8.11.2006 16:26:46] Jüri Kaljundi [nagi.ee] says: the http://www.skype.com/intl/et/share/publicchats/?skypename=jkaljundi&topic ....  page which gives a page not found
[8.11.2006 16:29:14] Wilhelm Lundborg says: Jüri, remove /intl/et from the link and it will work
[8.11.2006 16:29:49] mike bartlett says: will report that to the web team
[8.11.2006 16:30:01] Wilhelm Lundborg says: its done, Mike
[8.11.2006 16:30:26] mike bartlett says: thanks Wilhelm
[8.11.2006 16:34:21] Jüri Kaljundi [nagi.ee] says: thanks Wilhelm, changing the URL manually helped, sent an e-mail to Jaanus about that before as well.
[8.11.2006 16:34:30] Wilhelm Lundborg says: np
[8.11.2006 16:57:57] Jaanus Kase says: thanks guys, yep, we're having trouble generating the buttons from other langs than English, a fix is on the way.
[8.11.2006 16:58:55] Jüri Kaljundi [nagi.ee] says: until that redirecting all /intl/xx/ to / would be helpful
[8.11.2006 17:14:37] Jaanus Kase says: ok, now the promote link works from non-English too.

We also had some questions about the new features of 3.0.

[8.11.2006 22:04:39] vastcash says: In Duncan's "A new face for 3.0" blog post, he says at the end "... and if you don’t think it’s cool enough, don’t panic. You can personalise Skype with your own wallpaper."
I don't see anyway to change Skype's background/wallpaper.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
[8.11.2006 22:05:34] BarkerJr says: it's in the Personalize botton to the right
[8.11.2006 22:05:56] BarkerJr says: button, rather
[8.11.2006 22:06:22] vastcash says: Yes, I see it. I thought I looked there... overlooked it, I guess. Thanks.

We also had some experiments about, er, different ways of community interaction to support new participants.

[9.11.2006 19:06:25] Ed Byford joined this chat
[9.11.2006 19:09:15] Ed Byford says: hello?
[9.11.2006 19:09:45] Ed Byford left this chat
[9.11.2006 19:09:45] Julian Bond +0.67 -0.0 says: g'day
[9.11.2006 19:10:15] BarkerJr  says: you scared him away
[9.11.2006 19:10:43] Julian Bond +0.67 -0.0 says: hehe
[9.11.2006 19:11:14] Julian Bond +0.67 -0.0 says: I'll try going "BOO!" next time.
[9.11.2006 19:24:32] mrlaufer joined this chat
[9.11.2006 19:47:54] Arne Teichmann says: BOO!
[9.11.2006 19:48:49] BarkerJr  says: doesn't seem to have worked
[9.11.2006 19:48:59] Julian Bond +0.68 -0.0 says: LOL!
[9.11.2006 19:49:35] Julian Bond +0.68 -0.0 says: You have to wait for them to say something. *then* pop the paper bag.
[9.11.2006 19:49:59] Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, Calif |GMT-8 says: whoa! who made that loud sound?

Lots of other discussion too. We're purposefully not constraining the topics to see where the discussion will guide itself.

Come join the fun by using the chat link in the right sidebar if you're using Skype 3.0 beta for Windows. We're close to the 100 participants limit, but some people are occasionally leaving too, so pretty sure that there will be a free spot or two available. Or, if you're a developer, you may want to use the developer chat on the Developer Blog that we just set up. There's one also on the French blog for the francophones.