Chat Program Suggestions

A big factor will be wether you want the chat to only work inside your building or also work externally.

We're still using good ol' AIM, mostly because that is what we've been using for 10 years and it does most of what we need. That said we'll be switching everyone over to Cisco Jaber when we upgrade our UCM in a few months.

If you are on Macs you could get an OS X Messages server up and running for $20.

For spell check we use Tansa which is spell check on steroids. It also checks for AP and local style using a shared library on the server. It gets AP style updates automatically and if our ME adds an unusual spelling (person's name, street, etc.) then everyone on staff gets the updates all at once. It goes beyond simple spell check by also flagging questionable words like "pubic" (which is a valid spelling) to make sure it is really what you meant to type. It works in web browsers, Word, InDesign and InCopy.