It was a pleasant surprise this morning when I logged into Facebook to find chat turned on. This feature has been in the works for sometime, and released slowly to a limited set of users. I can already hear groans from tons of IM users ” Not another one”, but this feature is here to stay and perhaps even dominate!

The chat bar sits at the bottom of your profile page and displays your online friends, current chat conversations, notifications and settings where you can change your online status. Like Gtalk, Facebook allows you to pop your conversation into a separate window and you can even see your online friends list while you continue chatting. Overall I think the chat experience is smooth and slick, powered by Ajax. It will be interesting to observe whether users will shed the comfort of their legacy IMs, especially Gtalk, in coming days, but what Facebook has working in it’s advantage is the existence of a vibrant social network around which they hope to promote their chat application.

We watched with jealousy as all the big cities (and some small ones) had the street view option in Google Maps, but the google blog surprised me with a post that the Triangle region now has this facility. Not only is this an useful utility in google maps, it also gives me a chance to do some ’sightseeing’ of a different kind - new addition to my hobby list after scrobbling.

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