What is Joom?

Joom is a collaborative brainstorming tool, similar to a group chat plus topics creation.

The focus is on simplicity and ease of use - you only need to install the joom client, which runs on any computer with a Java Virtual Machine (5.0 or greater) and a gmail account - actually every jabber account will work, and gmail accounts are also jabber accounts.

Although you'll need joom to create the brainstorming session, you are not required to use it to join an existing session - you can just use gtalk's group chat (you'll miss some features though).

How does it work?

1. Session participants - These users can send (broadcast) messages, see all exchanged messages and invite other participants
2. Contacts list (Roster) - This is the contact list of the current user (similar to the contact list of gtalk). You can invite users to the session by double-clicking their id.
3. Active topic - You can only have, at most, one active topic. This works like a filter over the whole message stream - only those with a certain #hashtag appear in the corresponding topic box. To select an active topic, just expand that box.
4. Inactive topic - Even though you can't see the messages in inactive topics, joom will show you how much conversation you maybe missing through a kind of unread count number.
5. Discussion history - Here goes the whole chat history, regardless of the topic.
6. Message input box - This is where you type your messages to the group. You can append an #hashtag to associate the message with a topic. If you have an active topic, the hashtag is automatically appended.

News

6 Nov 2009 - Released version 0.4, with increased security (only invited users can join the session), enhanced usability and some minor fixes.

5 Oct 2009 - Joom was certified by Softpedia as 100% free. http://mac.softpedia.com/progClean/Joom-Clean-64475.html