Chat

Online Chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions. Online chat may address as well point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers.

One can differentiate two technical forms:

• Pure online Chat: Chatrooms are offered completely online, with no need to install any program on the local computer;
• Instant-Messaging : After downloading a special program to the local computer (client) the user can integrate his friends and colleagues, which also have access to the same Instant-Messaging client;

and two "social" forms:

• private Chat: only among known people;
• public Chat: anonymous users in a multi-user environment.

Sometimes other virtual-learning-tools include a Chat to provide the possibility to communicate, while using the tool. Examples are:

• nearly all learning-platforms
  
• mind-mapping tools (e.g. the to-pay-versions of MindMeister)
• collaborative-writing tools (e.g. Titanpad)