What a thing to jump back into!

Is there an IRC server up or a channel somewhere? I wouldn't mind idling. I'm more likely to chat to band amp users via mIRC than I am through the website at the moment, whether for development or music. (I think there should be a channel for each :P).

I wouldn't mind contributing so I might setup a UK ninjam server for users... just need some people to try it out possibly. .

Nope, not IRC channel. You could set something like that up, but, really, not sure how many people know how to use IRC, as it's still not very mainstream (at least not so much as say, Jabber, MSN, or AIM). It would be cool if the IRC actually connected to the chatroom on BandAMP (so when you post on either, it shows up on the other one as well), but not sure how to make that work.

IRC on the AMP?  That's doable---usually people use a Java applet, however.  Hacking the functionality into Lace is next to impossible.  I'm just thinking out loud here: PHP has sockets functionality, but once the page has loaded and the script stops executing, the connection will close.  Even if you have a separate script running in the background, you'll max out the server connection timeout.  It's doable with some server tweaks, but definitely not worth it, I don't think.

For the record, I'd happily use IRC.  It's my preferred means of messenging, but yeah, it requires a certain level of tech-geekiness.  Most of my friends aren't going to install an IRC client.  I mainly use it for the development chat.

Hmm... Yeah, you'd have to do some javascript timeout's that just check to see whether there are updates on the server... so it really couldn't be in REAL TIME. However, I believe that's how lace works... so the reaction times would be quite similar to how Lace is now... Which really isn't too quick, and kinda sucks when you get a few people chatting at once.

Btw, avinashv, what programming languages do you know? It sounds like you've got some good knowledge there. I've never really messed around with Java, just PHP/SQL/Javascript. AKA, the basic web programming languages.

Lace uses the concept of AJAX...it asynchronously (via Javascript) serves a PHP page that polls a database for a new entry and displays it.  An IRC server operates differently.  To receive messages, you have to be authenticated by the centralized server (e.g. efnet), logged into a room and then connected over a period of time.  Continuously polling the same script via JScript won't work because each time the script is polled, the connection is simultaneously lost and regained...forcing reauthentication each time.  AFAIK, an IRC server would ban anything trying to get authentication that many times a second.

Lace's response can be improved by reducing the interval between script polls.  It's absurdly high given it's short spurts of text.  It's not the greatest system anyway...

I am familiar with (I won't list the non-web development related ones): XML/HTML, XSL, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, and a little bit of Erlang---though I would never use Erlang.  Professionally, I've programmed in Python using Plone over Zope (commercial-level frameworks) for my university, and PHP for various projects.  I guess I can say I know SQL, but I prefer to use database abstraction frameworks for ease of use and extensibility...something like ActiveRecord or SQLAlchemy...although I know my way around SQLite and mySQL enough to hold my own.

I've been in the 'game' for 8 or 9 years now.  HTML 4 was 'the big thing' when I started web development, which puts us in the late 90's.  I didn't use CSS for a while (good old font, center, bold and italic tags, eh?).  I started with server-side scripting somewhere in the early 2000's with PHP.  Python is new...I probably have 3 years experience.   Ruby is year-and-a-half, and Erlang is something like 1 week 5 weeks ago.