Teleconferences
The Participants of MW4D are meeting regularly by phones. The teleconferences are taking place the first and the third monday of each month at 8:00am EST (east coast-Boston time). the time is expressed in the timezone of the teleconference system, and is subject to Daylight Saving time. At any time of the year, the teleconference will take place at 8:00am bosotn time. To find what time this is in your region, you can check the world clock meeting planner.
This W3C teleconference system is called Zakim and has 3 phones number in which it accepts call:
- +1-617-761-6200 (US number)
- +33.4.89.06.34.99 (French number)
- +44.117.370.6152 (UK number)
W3C is providing an online documentation.
In order to join a conference, you will need an access code. For the MW4D IG, it will always be 6493# .
We will also use an IRC channel
Server: irc.w3.org
Port: 6665
Channel: #mw4d
See below for details on how to use IRC.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
IRC is often a good alternative (or supplement!) to phone when having on-line discussions. Taking notes on IRC during a phone call or conference,and then mailing the log to the participants (possibly after editing it) has proven to be a pretty effective collaboration technique.
In particular, IRC is useful for sharing URIs with other participants andfor keeping up to date with the meeting scribe in realtime.
- What is IRC?
- What use is IRC?
- Where can I find a Client?
- Where can I find a Server?
- Suggested Channels
- Hints and Work Arounds
What is IRC?
Some basic information about IRC:
- If you are new to IRC, some good starting points are available from our wiki IRC.
- If you want to know the details then there is also the IRC specification, RFC 1459.
What use is IRC?
IRC is more immediate than email: it's almost like having a conversation.But for many people it is much less disruptive than the telephone: you canreply when you are less busy.
IRC is also useful when you are on the telephone with someone. You canpaste snippets of code, a URI, a draft paragraph (but see hints for a warning about line length and pasting too muchat one time)
For teleconferences, it is W3C convention to use an IRC channel with allor most of the participants online.
Some basic information about IRC:
Where can I find a Client?
You need a client on your desktop - it's pretty much like a mail client, anews client - it just speaks another protocol. See also the hint section. There is a long and intimidating list of IRC clients, and Wikipediausually has another (sometimes it gets deleted or renamed)
As of 2007, xchat is one of the more common, and also mIRC, and both of these handle (or can be configured to handle) UTF-8 text. Read A detailed documentation of xchat, particularly learn how to add a new network where you can set the w3c server host and port.
As of 2008, there is now a new online webchat that people can use to access W3C irc server: http://www.mibbit.com
From the homepage of mibbit, use the drop down menu in the first windows, after "Connect ot IRC server" and select "Other Server".
In the new "Server"field enter "irc.w3.org:6665". In the field "Nick", enter your nickname, and in the field "Channel" enter "#mw4d". Then, clicking on "Go" should connect you to the MW4D irc channel.
If you want to skip the configuration step of Mibbit, you can also directly connect to the MW4D channel.
W3C is also offering a Web Interface to W3C IRC service.
This service is accessible for official member of the group only. Use your W3C username and password to access this page. In the "Nick" field, put your nickname. In the "RealName" field, put your full name. In the "Channels" field, put "#mw4d". Then click "Login" and you will be connected.
The following list is older:
| Platform | IRC Client |
|---|---|
| Windows | There are many clients available from Stroud's CWSApps List. There is a Windows version of xchat, another popular client which is freeware Trillian is another good option. |
| Unix | Zircon is a good
Tcl/tk client |
| Mac | Ircle can process Japanese and is shareware. Snak has a clean interface and is shareware. ShadowIRC is free (GNU). Mac IRC software was listed here or search VersionTracker. Colloquy free (open source) and gaining popularity. |
IRC clients have also been integrated into web browsers as applets,plug-ins, and helper-apps. Some people seem to likethe ChatZillaextension for Firefox; Opera comes bundled with an IRC client.
Where can I find a Server?
Remember that, just as with email, IRC is usually not encrypted; inaddition, people sometimes keep logs of everything said in channels they arein, and publish the logs on the Web.
W3C Server
W3C has a private server running on irc.w3.org:6665. Because many corporate firewalls block the port range this is in, the public ircd is also sitting onport 80, irc.w3.org:80. (That is, port 6665 of the machine irc.w3.org; the traditional port for IRC is 6667.)
This server is the one we will use during the MW4D teleconference.
Public Servers
There are also many public servers around the world, if you need one, some possibilities are:
| Location | IRC Server |
|---|---|
| MIT | irc.stealth.net |
| Sophia | irc.eurecom.fr |
| Grenoble | irc.univ-lyon1.fr |
| Keio | irc.tokyo.wide.ad.jp |
Suggested Channels
Note: most irc clients provide a way to automatically join channels; e.g.In mIRC you can add the line /join #mw4d under<file>/<options>/<irc>/<perform> to automatically join the #mw4d channel.
Channels are automatically created on demand so it is very easy to createnew channels as we need them. Channels are joined in traditional IRC clients by using the command
/join #<name>
The channel we will use for MW4D is #mw4d
Hints and Work Arounds
If you have some experiences that you want to pass on then please add them to this list:
- NickServ
You can now register your nickname with our IRC server. Do "/ns help" for info, and look in your status window.
(update: nickserver was neither reliable nor all that popular, so we withdrew it)
- Line Lengths and Pasting
The IRC protocol has a short (about 500 character) limit on packet size, and messages can't span packets. This means that if you paste a long line, e.g. a whole paragraph with no line-feeds, it will look fine to you but to others it will appear truncated.
Keep lines under 400 characters for safety.
In addition, there is a limit on how fast you can paste or issue commands. The rate is about one command every two seconds, although you can have the first four commands without any delay; this means a paste of 25 lines will take about ten seconds to appear on other user's screens, and longer pastes can quickly get annoying. Also, pasted lines starting with / will usually be interpreted as IRC commands!
To paste long fragments, use a paste bin and then share the URI in IRC.
- Timestamps in IRC for Unix
To add timestamps to discussions, if you use ircII (almost no-one does), you might want to add in your profile (~/.ircrc) the following command: /load hour.kg. This script may be located in the irc script directory or in your home directory. do /time.yes to add timestamps, /time.no to remove them.
- Timestamps in mIRC
To add timestamps to your display of discussions in the mIRC client, use File -> Options, go to the IRC section, Messages subsection, and check the "Timestamp events" box. The time that is displayed will be the local time from your machine; others might therefore not see the same timestamps that you see.
- NickServ
You can now register your nickname with our IRC server. Do "/ns help" for info, and look in your status window.
(update: nickserver was neither reliable nor all that popular, so we withdrew it)
- Making UTF-8 work in mIRC
It seems that to enable input and cut and paste of utf-8 you need to click on the system icon (top left of the window), select Font... and set UTF-8 option to Display and encode, rather than Default.
Teleconference Archives
2010
November: 15
October: 11
July: 5
March: 8
February: 15
January: 18
2009
November: 9
July: 6
April: 6
January: 5