

Check out my weekend project: instant secure password-less chat - IgorPartola
https://natchat.com/

======
IgorPartola
This project was built in about 12 hours total. NAT chat creates chat rooms
based on your external IP, so anyone behind your home or office router can
join, but nobody from the outside can see what you are talking about.

Technology: nginx for serving static files, node.js + socket.io for chat
communication.

Use case: you want to quickly share a link with someone in your home/office,
but don't want to e-mail it to them and don't want to make them sign into an
instant messenger, etc. Traffic is encrypted through SSL/TLS and nothing is
stored on the server aside from a short buffer that sits in memory.

~~~
SamReidHughes
_but nobody from the outside can see what you are talking about._

How do we know you're not piping everything to Israel? Or worse, Google?

~~~
kylemathews
I'd like to see the code.

~~~
IgorPartola
Will share tonight.

~~~
IgorPartola
Here it is: <http://github.com/ipartola/natchat>

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ryandvm
I like it. I'm a big fan of simplicity over features.

I had a similar weekend project that I threw together last year to make myself
familiar with App Engine. It was similar to yours in that it was
unauthenticated AJAX chat, but it relied on obscure URLs instead of grouping
by IP address.

For instance, to make a spontaneous chat session with Hacker News junkies
you'd make up something like: <http://www.yakeze.com/chat/HackerNews20101011/>

~~~
mike-cardwell
Sounds very much like twich.me, which was also discussed on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1590173>

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rlpb
I like the idea.

There's also some sort of Zeroconf-based chat in Pidgin/Telepathy/Empathy
which serves the same purpose and doesn't rely on you and the Internet for
privacy, although it isn't quite as instant as your solution.

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zacharypinter
Cool idea. Any chance of adding autogenerated room ids (like
<http://titanpad.com/yiA0RpN7o9>) instead of just using external IP's?

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ritonlajoie
I just saw a guy in the chat, I'm in my office. Does it mean there is someone
else that I could know, that is reading HN right now ? (the guy just left..)

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mike-cardwell
Here, it works fine in Safari, but is completely broken in Firefox 3.6 and
IE7. Looks like there is an uncaught security exception in the JS.

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meatsock
this will be a good place to hang out & see if the person hacking your home
system has funny things to say to ya. the call is coming from inside the
chatroom!

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mike-cardwell
You're missing a privacy policy and T&C's.

~~~
IgorPartola
So I am. But this thing was an exercise in using Node.js, not a way to make a
buck, so T&C were not on my initial TODO list. As for privacy, see my original
comment: the data is not logged. The rest is up to you.

~~~
mike-cardwell
T&C's aren't as important, but if people are going to be submitting data to
your website, you should have a privacy policy. A comment on a third party
forum isn't equivalent.

~~~
IgorPartola
That is a good point. I'll add it as soon as I have time.

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petervandijck
Excellent, like it a lot.

~~~
IgorPartola
Thank you.

