Jay in Minneapolis asked me about affordable and/or free online chat options, such as Private Chat from the Online Institute (http://www.onlineinstitute.com/chat/). Private Chat allows you to chat with one or more people (text chat) as well as post documents, including video in a shared space. The cost is a $10 setup fee and $10 per month. One of the nice things is that Private Chat is that it doesn’t require a software download.
So I have to admit that I wasn’t able to look personally into a lot of options, but I was able to check out ThinkofIt http://thinkofit.com/webconf/index.htm, a (Minnesota-based) guide to web conferencing and online chat tools. They mention Online Institute – and several others.
Sorry Jay that’s the best I can do but ThinkofIt lists several similar tools (http://thinkofit.com/webconf/hostsites.htm#cheapbbs) with good, concise descriptions and some of the tools are free.
I hope that helps!
Byte of the Week 
Thanks Ann. This will be helpful as we continue our research of this.I would be interested in the thoughts of anyone that has specific experience with any of these services? Have you had success with them?
Sadly I haven’t really used any of these – but someone write to say that they thought that Google Wave might offer some good options. I am hoping to try that out in the next two weeks. So I’ll let you know asap!