On Chat

Chatting on the Internet just got a lot more colorful, thanks to a California company, Media Super Collider of Marina del Rey.\n The company has established a new on-line community, OnChat (www.onchat.com), that threatens to make the old style of chatting--line after line of boring text--become obsolete. Best of all for users, there is no charge and no software to download. The site is financed by advertisers.\n Those who come to the site may register and select an identity or simply enter as a guest.\n Once inside, OnChat offers a selection of chat rooms, each one colorful and inviting. And, unlike other sites, it gives users the opportunity to create their own rooms using simple on-line tools.\n Before entering the room, users can accept the default avatar (a picture symbol that represents them in the room) or select from a variety of colorful avatars. For creative chatters, there's also the option of using a basic drawing program to create your own avatar.\n When you chat in the room, your message shows up as a dialog balloon above your avatar, just like spoken words in a comic strip.\n If you want to have a private conversation with someone else in the room, all you have to do is click on their avatar.\n "We wanted to create a GeoCities of chat," says Shahril Ibrahim, CEO and chief technologist, referring to the single largest community of private Web sites.\n It actually goes further than that, he said. The idea is to allow users to have more creative freedom than ever before, even the freedom to spray graffiti on their rooms.\n Ibrahim would like to see OnChat grow to include organizations and groups of friends all over the world who create their own meeting rooms and club houses. For those who desire privacy, OnChat allows you to limit access to specified users.