Olark

Many of our customers try to user Google Apps for your domain with Olark. Unfortunately Google does not tell system administrators to configure Google Talk to work with external XMPP(Jabber) networks by default. This leads to a lot of problems when a customer has Google Apps for their domain, but does not have the required SRV records to work with Olark.

We’ve always pointed out customers to: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34143

But, this doesn’t always solve the problem, because sometimes it takes a while for ISPs to update their DNS cache, and it’s hard for our customers to double check their ISP, or their own attempts at setting SRV records. That is until now!

Introducing the Olark Google Apps for your domain SRV Checker. Using the below tool, you can now finally see if your SRV records are set correctly.

Olark Google Apps for your Domain SRV Checker

I’ll admit that I had a hard time switching from Linode to the Rackspace Cloud. Both because moving datacenters (even in a cloud world) is still a big pain and I really did like linode. Linode still has a few features that I really miss, like graphs of CPU usage and disk IO, and a control panel that’s fairly fast and responsive.

However, while Rackspace’s control panel might fall short there overall service has been amazing. 24/7 live technical support, really clean implementation of daily and weekly backups, and automated server upgrading (like slicehost, I can migrate from a 2 GIG to 4 GIG instance with a few clicks, and minimal downtime).

Enough about rackspace. Today Rackspace launched their Tools.rackspace.com directory of products. It’s quite the line up. They have deal from CloudKick, MixPanel, and a few other companies that we respect and think are awesome. So if your looking for solutions that are using Rackspace as their backbone, and are pretty damn awesome you should check out that directory.

I can tell you this much, we are based in the cloud, and have found rackspaces services to be pretty unbeatable. So if you have a problem with one of these services, it’s definitely not the hosting infrastructure’s fault ;-).

Here at Olark we are all about simplicity - both design and functionality. When we discover that our customers are struggling with any feature of our product, that’s our cue to work really hard to make it easier.

One thing we’ve noticed over the last few months is that many of you cannot easily add Javascript to your website. Sometimes it’s because you might not know how to add code to your website. Sometimes it’s because a separate team manages your website. It boils down to this: we needed to create an easier non-technical option for using Olark.

Last week we built a dead-simple solution. We call it ChatLinks - an easy way to use Olark without ever touching your website. Making a ChatLink is simple:

1. go to the dashboard
2. tell us a webpage where you want to add chat
3. we give you a link (called a ChatLink) to share with other people

When other people visit a ChatLink, they will see the original webpage with the Olark chat widget floating in the corner. And that’s all you need to chat with your visitors. No need to contact your tech guy, no need to learn any code.

How can you use ChatLinks? Here are just a few examples of the cool things you can do:

1. Promote your latest real-estate listing with a ChatLink. Be available to chat immediately with interested home buyers.
2. Use ChatLinks in an AdWords campaign. Offer to chat with potential clients as soon as they click from the advertisement. Great for lawyers, lenders, and insurance providers.
3. Email your customers with ChatLinks to new products in your store. Talk to those customers when they visit your product pages from the email.
4. Share your latest for-sale painting on Twitter with a ChatLink. Allow potential buyers to ask questions and learn about the inspiration behind your artwork.

Give it a try!

So – a few of our users have reported problems logging into Olark and hab.la (for older users) with the most recent edition of pidgin (2.6.1 and 2.6.0).

If you are using pidgin, and your connection to Olark is hanging, it is probably because of this problem.

There’s even a bug report filed at: http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/9956.

As far as we can tell the latest version of pidgin (2.6.1) is requiring SRV records. Rather than just ignoring SRV records if they don’t exit.

One of our customers has reported that you can fix this problem by copying over libpurple.dll. http://www.olark.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=576

In addition we have added SRV records to olark.com and hab.la. Which should solve this problem for good as soon as your DNS is updated.

If you run a jabber server, and your customers are having trouble connecting to it with the latest version of pidgin. I recommend that you set the SRV records on your domain. I found: http://www.jms1.net/jabberd2/srv.shtml to be a great guide for generating jabber SRV records.

Since joining forces with Ben about 6 months ago, we have had a blast creating and testing out new features (both internal and public). Along the way, we have iteratively improved the flexibility of our widget styling, core Javascript, and backend services to make customization easier.

We feel that it’s time to start exposing some this flexibility outside of the founding team here at Olark. Why? Well, it turns out that we are hitting a pretty broad range of customers: ecommerce sites, small businesses, realtors, freelancers, lawyers, and more. You can imagine that each of these customers has specific needs for their business.

The most-requested features definitely get our full attention, but obviously we can’t incorporate every idea that comes our way. So now we invite you, the designers and developers of the world, to start working with us. If you’re setting up a website with Olark, you can customize the look and behavior to fit the specific needs for your business.

Our first step is offering full CSS styling, for designing custom themes. Designers can get access to this immediately from our plans page. We are still testing out pricing models for this, and right now we ask that you keep our branding intact. Please give us your feedback!

Our next step is a new Javascript API, for developing custom behaviors. With the current version of the API, you can do basic plugins like the example below. This example changes the visitor screen name to their geolocation. Instead of seeing “webuser1234” in your buddy list, you will see “Mountain View, CA, USA” or “London, UK”.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOURGOOGLEJSAPI_KEY"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

var config = wc_config();

if (google && google.loader && google.loader.ClientLocation) {
    config.vars.force_nickname = ""+
        google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city+", "+
        google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region+", "+
        google.loader.ClientLocation.address.country;
}

wc_init("YOUR_HABLA_SITE_ID", config);

</script>

Over the next month, we will be releasing an upgraded Javascript API to allow easy triggers for important events (e.g. shopping cart failures) and simple hooks into our message system, with jQuery at the core. If you are a developer and have some great ideas of what you would like to see, please get in touch with me on my Olark at mjpizz.com or on Twitter.

-Matt @mjpizz

So let’s say I tell you the name of my company is habla, and I pronounce it correctly as ah-bla. If you are a native English speaker who doesn’t know Spanish your chances of knowing how to spell habla are pretty low. Let’s say you luck out, hear what I said, and know how to spell habla.

You go to a search engine and type in habla. We are not the #1 result on ANY major search engine. Now type in habla.com, nope, that’s not us either. Let’s say your in Spain and using google.es, type in “habla chat” or “habla”, you won’t find us.

Moral of the story, habla is a pretty cool name if you know Spanish, and can remember the domain name is hab.la, (and I always pronounce it H-A-B-DOT-L-A). But in a world where word of mouth is still important, and not everyone knows Spanish, hab.la is not the best name in the world. Especially if your going after a US market that is suspicious of any domain that doesn’t end in .com.

Now, we were very attached to hab.la, and our little Habla dudes (cartoon characters). We even tried to buy habla.com, Telpathy, the company that owns the domain wanted 80K for it, which was out of the question – that is unless all of our users donate $4 each :-). Pennies to pay to hold on to the beloved habla brand.

So when push came to shove it didn’t really make sense to try to build a brand around a domain that we could never own, with a word that most Americans can’t spell. As much as I love hab.la, there are a lot of rational reasons why having a .com with a short, easy to spell, easy to hear, and easy to pronounce name makes sense, hence olark.com.

I’ll let the story of Olark.com, and the exciting new things to come keep you on the edge of your seat :-). Oh yea, and if you have trouble spelling olark.com, we own OhLark.com too, Rockin!

-Ben

This started off as a post about the future of Hab.la as Olark.com, but it somehow morphed into a post about the history of Hab.la. Look for my next post about the Future of Hab.la as Olark.com soon.

A little over 2 years ago Roland Osborne, Kevin Ferguson, David Eisinger and I founded Hab.la as a cool side project, and Hab.la was just that. A cool side project with a really great domain name hab.la – short sweet, easy to remember. Deciding on a domain name was hard, hab.la beat out jabitat and madagent.tm.

Over the past few years the team has changed, but the goal has remained the same, be the EASIEST WAY to add live chat and REALTIME communication to your website. Hands down, Period! Help website owners turn their passive websites into active storefronts where they can meet and interact with visitors to their website. One up this web 2.0 craze by providing people a simple way to make their website more personal, and helping website owners react to the needs of their customers – and connect with the leads who are already coming to your website.

Hab.la began a virtual company with founders spread out across the country. The current team is based in Mountain View, California and consists of me, Ben Congleton, Matt Pizzimenti, Andrew Fayad, Roland Osborne, and Brandon Dimcheff. Kevin Ferguson continues to serve us as an adviser, but has picked another path (keeping things shipshape at Meebo). We have many advisers, but Dug Song and Gagan Palrecha have advised us from the start.

A few months ago we received seed funding and went full time. A lot has changed in the meantime. We’ve launched paid premium editions of our Hab.la product. We incorporated as Habla Incorporated in Delaware. We’ve redesigned our website to cater to our increasingly business oriented audience, but tried to keep some of the cartoony fun from the original Hab.la days. We’ve stabilized and improved the underlying architecture that drives our messaging system while setting the groundwork for some really exciting features. Yes our technology is exciting, but at the heart of our efforts is the goal to provide outstanding service to our customers.

We are a customer focused company. Customers first, technology second.

Hi, I’m Andrew, thought it might be time I formally introduce myself ;-)

Many of you have probably had some contact with me either on our website’s Habla or your own. I joined the Habla team back in February/March of 2009 while attending the University of Michigan as a full time undergrad. My purpose on the founding team has been to provide the best customer support to current and perspective users. As a company, I would like us to be know for our support and dedication to customer service – a company with real people behind our website. That being said, your feedback these past few months has been absolutely essential to our product development and growth. We have been working all hours of the day to turn Habla from a cool side project into a thriving company.

The past month has been a big push for us, we are working hard to create something our customers want. In the next week or so we’ll be releasing lots of new stuff your way, including a revamp of the branding and name (as Ben mentioned earlier). Keep an eye out for our update email.

Remember, you can contact me at anytime at andrew@hab.la. I love receiving your feedback and comments about our service, especially when Habla changes the way people think about their website.

Another cool, unexpected bonus of our hard work – receiving invites from customers to websites for a quick chat on their new or well situated Habla.

I will be in touch through our blog and Habla, keep well!

Yours Truly,

Andrew (Once the Hablador now the Olarkee, or something like that…)

Planned downtime tonight as we migrate to rackspace. 12:00 PST Midnight - 3AM PST max.

-Ben

So first, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on the Hab.la (soon to be Olark.com) blog. A lot of exciting things are in the works as always. This week we launched a bunch of new plans. You probably noticed the new signup process, we tried to help new users experience Hab.la before they had completed signing up.

We monitored the changes that we made in the signup process using a tool from our friends at MixPanel. Which lets us compare the funnels on our old signup and our new signup. If you are confused by Google Analytics, or want to track events with a little more granularity I recommend checking their product out. In any case the new signup appears to be performing about 5% better getting people setup on their sites. (But is not yet available to Internet Explorer Users).

We’ve implemented RabbitMq to help speed up transcript processing, you’ll see some nice improvements to transcript processing in the next week or so.

We decided to become Olark.com to help our visitors find us better. When you see search referrals coming in for people searching for “hab.la.com” you start wondering how much traffic you are losing from people who can’t remember your name or try to spell “habla” like “ahblah” or “ahbla” or “obla” or “habla.la” or “habla.com”.

Roland has been working on some great new graphics for Olark. Think Lark – the bird, but far more valuable to your business than twitter :-) [at least in terms of direct value that we will be able to measure and present to you! ]

We welcome feedback on the name, but let’s just say we wasted far too much time figuring out the new name to be easily swayed to something new

I spent some time this week hacking on Puppet, it was a bit of a learning curve, but seems promising for managing configuration across all of our servers. To be honest we still have a manageable number of servers, but something like puppet lets me easily build classes of nodes with specific configuration. I.e. I can define a web node with nginx, haproxy, lighttpd, and apache, or a DB node with mysql. When I deploy a new server I just tell puppet what type of server it is, and it syncs up the right firewall options and configuration options. [I’ll post some of our specific config another time]

The great thing about using puppet for deployment, and storing the configuration in GIT, is that I can build a post-receive hook that take the latest commit to git, pushes it to puppet, let’s puppet update all of our servers. Just add a post-receive hook to your remote git repository. And make sure you have a password-less way for your git repository to update puppet.

#!/bin/bash
#.git/hooks/post-receive
ssh puppet@puppet "cd /etc/puppet && git pull"

So now I can edit config for all of our machines in textmate, commit with git, and sit back, and manage our entire cluster without logging into a single machine using SSH :-).

-Ben