Category:Palace Chat

Welcome The Palace software lets you chat within two dimensional virtual environments such as auditoriums, beaches, clubs, etc. In these online visual places, you can move from one 'room' to the next and use visual cues to keep track of multiple conversations. Objects in rooms can be linked to existing Web pages, e-mail forms, and bulletin boards or animated to move and make sounds. Participants use avatars (photos or any unique graphics) to represent themselves online, and conversations appear in word balloons next to them.

To learn more about the project, the software, or receive assistance in our community forums, please use the navigation options to the left.

About the Project The Palace Legacy Project ("the Project") is a privately funded public service for the community of people who use the Palace Chat software, with its focus on preserving one of the greatest two-dimensional visual chat programs in the history of the Internet. It is a Web property owned and operated by DougCo Ventures, the unincorporated, sole proprietorship holding company of British Columbia-based resident Doug Mehus.

Project Governance The Palace Legacy Project is not governed by a board of directors. Sole authority for operational and strategic decision making for the Project rests with its owner/operator, DougCo Ventures.

Palace History The Palace is a two dimensional graphical chat application that enables users to interact with each other through a variety of mediums. These mediums include expressive avatars, chat, and sounds.

It was originally created by Jim Bumgardner as somewhat of a technology experiment back in 1994 for Time Warner Interactive, but quickly evolved into one of the greatest phenomenon on the Internet, creating a successful online community and community of communities.

In 1996, the rights to The Palace were sold to The Palace, Inc. ("TPI"), a newly formed company by Intel Corporation and SOFTBANK, which added users by charging a fee for a lifetime membership. While a significant number of users were added to the Palace Chat community this way, TPI couldn't sustain itself because the memberships lasted a lifetime with unlimited free upgrades.

So, in 1998 the software was sold to a Electric Communities, creators of the Habitats visual chat architecture and another holding of TPI majority shareholder SOFTBANK. In 1999, Electric Communities became Communities.com ("CC"). This was at the height of the "dot-com" boom when conventional wisdom believed Internet advertising alone could financially sustain a company, so CC thought they could greatly increase The Palace's exposure but remain profitable if they made these memberships free, while using banners as its sole means of financial support.

Communities.com continued to bring users to The Palace by greatly enhancing the InstantPalace java viewer and calling it The Palace Viewer ("TPV"). At its height, it was closely equivalent to the actual user software in terms of feature set and compatibility. In some aspects, it was more advanced, allowing full color room art and avatars. CC's events team, led by long-time Palatian Cyndi Mudge, FO's alter-ego, who had been tapped as the company Events Producer, landed numerous deals with big companies like CBS Corporation to produce new Palaces, while bringing big name celebrities to do online interviews at its events concourse, The Arena.

Sadly, in October 2000 when the Internet bubble popped and the "dot-coms" began to melt down, Communities.com decided support for The Palace was to be immediately ceased. This day, on the first Tuesday in October of that year, was called "Black Tuesday" by some Palace users. Early the following year, in March 2001, the board of directors at Communities.com made the decision to file for voluntary liquidation under Chapter 7 of the U.S. bankruptcy code.

The rights to The Palace and its underlying source code are now owned by Open Text Corporation. However, they currently have no plans for it. So, community hubs like The Palace Legacy Project ("TPLP") run The Palace and attract new users. As the Manager for TPLP, I am happy to be apart of it.

Downloads Obtaining The Palace user software is quick, easy, and only takes a few minutes. If you are a first time user looking to connect to various Palace Servers so you can chat with friends, wear Avatars, etc., please choose the version appropriate to your operating system under Client Downloads.

If you are an experienced Palatian looking to build your own Palace site that users can come to chat at, please choose the version appropriate to your operating system under Server Downloads. If you are running The Palace Server under UNIX (Linux or Solaris), you have the option of adding additional functionality and security by adding PServer plugins. Visit Avatar Palace Plugins to download them. Avatar Palace Plugins has become a hub for all Palace Server plugin development and activity.

In any case, if you are downloading the client software or your own server, you will need a registration code. Please head over to the Palace Registration Code Distributor site, brought to you by the Folks at thePalace.com.

Alternatively, if you are a software developer looking to create your own build of The Palace software or create useful Palace client or server plugins, please see the Developer Resources section for our collection of developer APIs and source code. (Note: the source code itself is for an ancient version of the client and server, circa version 2.0 or so.)

Windows Client : http://www.palacechat.us/downloads/client/windows32/PalaceUserWin.exe Linux Client : http://www.palacechat.us/downloads/server/bsdi/PalaceServerBSDI.tar.gz

Windows Server : http://www.palacechat.us/downloads/server/windows32/PalaceServerWin.exe Linux Server : http://www.palacechat.us/downloads/server/linux/PalaceServerLinux.tar.gz

( Hazirlayan AGA47 )