Audio chat rooms

[rufi]

As much as I love listening to someone else speak in Japanese (yeah), why aren't there any audio enhanced chat rooms? Practice speaking a different language with other people is one of the most important parts, and yet it's never utilized. Of course these rooms would have to have a limited amount of people per room.

[kinoko]

maybe there could be some official jpod skype chatroom.

i think you can only have 4 ppl in a voice chat... but there's also text chat, which more people can be in, and then people could take turns in the voice room, or make a bunch of voice chatrooms.

[Jason]

We talked about maybe having a regular Skype time a while back. The problem is that JPod101 listeners are spread all over the globe and are at different skill levels. So that makes it a bit difficult.

[rufi]

hmm I see. Well, there is a patch to make a 10 way conference call in Skype. But I was thinking since most JP and NA people use Yahoo or MSN messenger, we could have text chat rooms, which support audio as well. Well, Yahoo does at least. Or even hold a text chat room for each level on japanesepod101.com using JAVA?

[metablue]

What about Ventrilo? I don't know what the limit is, but you can have more than 4 people on at a time.

Laura

[Alkrasnov]

We can also do it on TeamSpeak, which is also a program for audio voncersation, which can have an endless number of speakers (or at least I think so...)

[Tiduas]

If there is any intressted people here, i can make over my Ventrilo server to an speaking Japanese server.
And the difference in skill is no problem, i can make rooms for all skills like "Really beginner room" Beginner room and so on...
And some rooms for just social talks.
My computer is almost always on to so, that wouldn't really be a problem.
And you can be how many you want on a Ventrilo server ^_^ (at least the version 2.1.3 that i am using wich i can send to ya if you want to come in).

So, do some people want me to put up an server?

[metablue]

Sounds good to me!

[Tiduas]

Then i will put IP and such a little later when i am ready with it later on the day =D (15:54 swedish time right now).

[Brody]

I would absolutely support this idea. I know my biggest shortcomings with Japanese are due to the fact that I have little chance to practice hearing and speaking Japanese. However, I think with every group we would need a Japanese moderator. It makes no sense to be practicing things incorrectly. That might be kind of hard to find for each group on a regular basis. Ideally, the moderator would only speak in Japanese as would the participants (as opposed to how Peter translates for us in the podcasts).

I think this would be the next big thing for JPOD: classes where students could actually start using what they've learned.

[penelope]

Hi everyone,
maybe I got something wrong, but why don't use skypecast? It fits up to 100 people, and the audio quality is good if you have a rapid internet connection.
I agree that we need some moderator who knows japanese rather well..
I don't know how much of a problem the different time-zones and the difference in japanese knowledge really would be.

Why don't we make a poll, just to see how many people would potentially be interested at a certain level and time?

Me, I'm only at lesson 50 or so so I'm really behind schedule , but still I would love to at least listen to others, even if I'm not advanced enough to intervene.
Right now I'm living in Europe.

We could schedule il maybe such that it's in the evening in europe, that would still be at day-time even on the east cost of the US... hm, let me see, I fear that would be night in asia... Morning in europe would be Ok for asia, but bad for US... Of course, if it's Ok for asia and US, it's probably night in europe. Still, I think there might be enough people to get it going, and there could be more groups.

But who would like to be a moderator? Should there be a given topic, to start discussion??

[sutekikanojyo]

We could schedule il maybe such that it's in the evening in europe, that would still be at day-time even on the east cost of the US... hm, let me see, I fear that would be night in asia... Morning in europe would be Ok for asia, but bad for US... Of course, if it's Ok for asia and US, it's probably night in europe. Still, I think there might be enough people to get it going, and there could be more groups.

i think this is the main problem... i'm in the US and right now i'm a night owl because i don't have any classes yet, but come august, late night japanese audio chats wouldn't be a good idea... no matter how much i wanna learn japanese. perhaps moderators in different parts of the world would be a good idea, so that people in that general time zone could communicate... or perhaps just one 24hr skype would be best (per level i suppose, to make it that much easier for others to communicate) with alternating moderators as time wears on across the globe. kind of like a changing-of-the-guard thing. that might entail, however, several moderators per time zone (not necessarily one-hour time zones, but generally different times of the day). and it doesn't even have to be up every day... just certain days of the week?

i personally don't know how skype works, i've never used it... and right now my sound card is dead anyway so i couldn't try one ^.~' but that's just a brainstorm... maybe something like that would work?

[smarts]

Has a decision been made about this yet? And is there info to connect to a server? I found this post through google and am very interested in the idea.

I can donate a 50 slot Ventrilo server to the project if needed.

[Tiduas]

I have created a Topic about this. i copy the text from there.

Everyone, i have put up a Ventrilo server with the version 2.1.2 (that means you can connect to it with the 2.1 versions of ventrilo i think... get the version anyway)

There is rooms for everyone and well, let just test this out, shall we? If someone have anything that should be added to the server, just let me know.
And if it get much people there, i will try to hold it up so much i can. Server lies in Sweden ^_^

Due to security things, i want these who want to come in send me an PM. No big deal for something that can be so great ? English and Japanese speaking only!

All are welcome to test this out, just PM me and we have a talking community soon ^_^

Smarts, if you have plans to have a Ventrilo server up 24/7, then i think you should be the one putting it up. Mine will only be up now if there is folks in there. See my Ventrilo as a little test that all must help with if anything shall go fine.

Let´s make this big now guys!

[smarts]

Mine is payed for and dedicated, so it will be up 24/7.

IP/Hostname: fission2.nrgservers.net
Port: 3543