How to find Groups in Ichat etc

Question

*Hi I am a 62 year old divorced male living in Wales U.K., and I love my Mac I also have Apple TV and an Iphone so as you can see its Apple for me. I have Ichat and would like to find a way to utilise it the ? is how can I find out what groups are available is there a list ? and how can I find other user's of Ichat, its a shame at the moment although its brilliant unless there is some way to use it its useless. Thanks*

Answer 1

viv0147 wrote:
... can I find out what groups are available is there a list ?
Scroll about two-thirds of the way down this page to the sections entitled "Chatter Lists pages" and "Lists of Chatrooms":
  http://www.ralphjohns.co.uk/page5.html
... can I find other user's of Ichat ...
Yes, but the info comes from the users rather than from a directory listing.
Some "chatters" list their iChat names (and sometimes their account types: AIM, MobilMe, MacdotCom, or Jabber) in their discussions postings or in their email signatures, etc. I, and many others, also include chat contact info in our personal web sites outside of Discussions.
If you do not already do so, you may want to offer your iChat contact info in some of your email or your personal web sites. Some of your readers or correspondents may surprise you with chat invitations. If that is not a practical option for you, keep an eye out for such info in web sites you visit, and ask your regular email contacts if they will share their iChat names so you can contact them. You may be surprised to find others who merely do not know that you use iChat.
... is there a list ?
I know of no central listing. If I did know of any, I would not consent to having my info in them because doing so would almost certainly immediately be the source of spam chat invitations.
For my needs, it is best to keep the information under my own control so I can share my chat name only those with whom I am willing to chat. For instance, I am willing to help iChat users test their connections, so I offer my testing account for that purpose here. Also, as I have mentioned above, the readers of my personal web pages can get my chat contact information from those pages.
To prevent spambots from mining our private information, it is wise not to post email, chat, or any other personal info in any discussion forum. However, many of us post our iChat names and / or email info in our Discussions Public Profiles for benefit of other Discussions users. Other fora and web sites work different, but, if you look, you might find chat names in some of the other sites you visit.
To see one example of how it works here in Discussions, you can click on my name at the left of this post. There you can see the information, including my iChat (AIM) name but not my email address, that I choose to make public. I am not interested in expanding my buddy list for social contacts, but I offer this iChat name here to users, including you, who want a brief test of their iChat connections.
To see if you already knew about this, I clicked the viv0147 at the left of your post and found that you do not include your chat name. If you like, you can add your iChat name to your public profile by editing your info via the "My Settings" link in the upper right corner of any Discussions. (You must be logged into Discussions to make changes.) After you have added your iChat name, you can even post your request that readers contact you in a reply in this thread (topic.) If you like, you could even add a request for contact in your User Profile when add your iChat name.
EZ Jim
G5 DP 1.8GHz w/Mac OS X (10.5.7) PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11)   iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9)  External iSight