[SEDXC] VE7CC Chat room Enhancement - UPDATE

[Al NN4ZZ]

Hi All,
If you use the VE7CC cluster / spotting program, you may remember we asked the author (Lee Sawkins) to add a chat room feature last year.   If you haven't discovered this great (free) program yet, you may want to give it a look at http://ve7cc.net/   

One of the features of the program is the ability to chat (sort of an instant messenger) with other users that are logged in.  It's a pretty neat way to share your real time spotting tips with other SEDXC members who happen to be logged in also.   A number of us this feature now.  One shortcoming of the chat feature is you have to invite each person individually.   Also if  you miss inviting someone, and one of the others has invited them, you will miss some of the messages.   It can be confusing.    

Here is what we asked Lee to add.  (see picture I have loaded to my webpage I sent to Lee to to help explain).    The new group chat feature would let us have a .grp file with a list of the names of the folks that would like to be included.   You could even have different groups for different interests (SEDXC.grp, SEDXC160.grp ).   With one click you would open the group in you chat window.  

http://www.nn4zz.com/images/ve7ccchatroom.jpg

I recently wrote Lee to see where this is on his list and his reply is below.....

*************** from Lee *************
Hi Al
A couple of other things have come up to the top of the list.  One is that the guy that was putting DX Summit spots into the cluster
has quit doing it.  I have written a program to get them.   It is running and I am debugging some of the features.  At least 15% of the
cluster spots come in from this route now.  Another glitch was that some of the WWV spots stopped and I had to write
a program to get them as well.  I hope to be able to get back to the chat feature shortly.
Lee
*************** from Lee *************

Lee is very accommodating and goes a great job supporting his free program.  I asked Lee to add the "dx bearing" feature to the program a few years ago and sent him a small donation for the effort.   Maybe we can pass the hat and send him a few dollars when we get this feature.  Now that he is getting closer to working on this enhancement, I'll check back with him regularly and keep you posted.

73...Al