Gooey Turns Any Web Site Into a Chat Room

Hypernix, an Internet communications company out of Tel Aviv, has launched Gooey, a free program that lets you see and talk to the other people browsing the same web site you are (spotted this one on GA-Source). Instead of herding everyone into a designated chat room, Gooey follows you around the web. The company calls the concept Dynamic Roving Communities: groups of any size that form wherever people happen to be and move with them from site to site, no walls, no fixed room. The download is free at www.getgooey.com.

Chat that travels with the page instead of locking you in a room is a genuinely odd idea, and I mean that as a compliment. Whether I actually want strangers materializing on every page I visit is another question entirely.