In one of my moments of inspiration, which lasted slightly more than a month, I've developed a high performance real time chat system that allows one to chat in Chinese, English, Japanese, Thai and Arabic (among other languages).
The chat system does not require anything, beyond a web browser. Supported web browsers are: Mozilla (1.5 and later), Internet Explorer 5 (and later), and Opera 7. Well, these are the three browsers that I've tested anyway.
The chat system supports animated emoticons, music, images and url links.
I am unable to ascertain at the moment what the upper limit for chatting on the system is, however, I have tried it with up to 10 connections. It is not easy to find people who can connect to the chat system for a relatively short amount of time, say, for 2 to 3 hours.
I envision the usage of this chat system as follows:
A friend has compared my chat system to the PHP shoutbox, asking how it differs from it. He fails to understand that my system is real time, and that the user doesn't have to refresh his web browser. He also fails to understand that it is not necessary for the end user's browser to poll every n interval to get a refresh.
Others have compared my chat system to the IRC. However, the target audience for my chat system consists of users who don't want to install yet another program, for a specific purpose. The target audience also includes those who don't know how to install a program.
I have attempted to promote the chat system by sending private messages to random users using IRC.
I have also demonstrated this chat system at a business networking meeting recently. There were a few companies which are interested in the chat system, and we have exchanged name cards.
I have yet to hear from them.
I am obviously very excited about the chat system.