We're building a web-based chat/journal application. You can use it at http://dev.sendlove.us/journal/index.php

It's written in PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux.

You can view our source code at http://svn.sendlove.us/svn/repos/journal/

Work Needed:

We want to see who is in the chat room, with an indication of how long it has been since a person has spoken. Specifically:

Move the main chat window over about 200pixels to the right, making room for a vertical list of recent speakers on the left of page. In this new area, display the names of people having spoken recently from top (most recent) to bottom (longest ago).

Add a table 'recent_speakers' to the database containing recent speakers, with user_ID, and last_entry (datetime). To populate the left pane, query most recent speaker names, limit 20 from this table. When a new entry is made in the entries table, update the table entry for this speaker.

Show the names of recent speakers in the exact same way the names are shown in the actual chat history/panel... as a bubble surrounding their name. When a person hovers on a name in this new panel, show how long ago it has been since they last spoke... i.e. "4 hours ago", or "5 minutes ago".

Don't display a scrollbar or title for this list (it's self-explanatory), just surround the panel with a single-pixel box like the one around the main chat window.

Do not display 'Guest' (unlogged) users in this pane.

Be smart about how you update this list... something like on receipt of new chatlines, check if the named people are in your current list, and re-run the query if they are not. Don't repeatedly poll to update this panel - we need to keep performance on this page as high as possible. Also make sure the that way you are rendering the names is similarly efficient.

Please only bid/accept this job if you can start work immediately and finish in 2 days, and can get in our chat channel (http://dev.sendlove.us/journal) while working. On acceptance we will give you an account/sandbox on dev.sendlove.us, where you can do the work directly!

Thanks!! Philip from Team LoveMachineInc.com