IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is provides a real time chat environment based on "channels". It has been used on the internet for over a decade as a communication medium. Many open source projects use IRC as a way of communicating amoung teams that are highly distributed. If you want to learn more about irc, check out http://irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html, it provides a good background for beginners.

MHVLUG maintains a channel on irc.freenode.net that let members connect outside of the meetings. It's pretty low traffic, with bursts of communications from time to time. To get on the MHVLUG IRC channel, connect to #mhvlug on irc.freenode.net.

IRC Software

• Xchat - one of the most common irc clients. It's in every Linux distro
• Pidgin - pidgin is cross platform and supports irc.

Web Based Connection

• For java capable browers - #mhvlug