Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) also supports IRC clients, in addition to IM servers.

It should also be mentioned that Impulse has an IRC client built right in.  Fire it up and go to the "Community" tab, and then choose "Chat" at the bottom.

The developers are typically in the channel a great deal. A number of us are already on IRC anyway, so one channel certainly doesn't hurt. Your best bet for a lively discussion is probably "business hours" (which for a number of developers is around 9am-6pm).

Either Stardock IRC has been down for over a day (which I doubt) or I'm being too stupid to understand the Pidgin interface. LR, can you possibly step me through getting a chat open?

It took me a while to figure out IRC in Pidgin, so I'm not surprised.  If you open up a connection window in Pidgin (I don't have it in front of me right now, so this will be a bit rough), you can type in irc.stardock.com .  Below that is a line for the forum, which is where you'll type in #elemental (you need the # sign).

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the better clarification than I could provide, Wahngrok.

So help a interested poster out, here: I go to Impulse's Chat screen and I see a drop-down menu asking me to select a room to join. The following options are listed:

#impulse
#stardock

#demigod
#galciv
#sins
#polmachine

#joeuser
#wincustomize

Shouldn't there be a #elemental there as well if we're supposed to be able to use the Impulse IRC client to access the chat room? Am I missing something or do we need to wait for an Impulse update before we can access that chat that way?

- Ash 

For those that do enter the chatroom, don't write something and expect an answer two seconds later. A lot of us are just sitting there, idle. That means that while we're in the chat, we're not -watching- the chat all the time. So don't be turned off just because we're not there to scratch your itch every second, or because the chat is dead just around the time you're there. Stick around.

Rawr.

*casts 'Revive' on the IRC*

Oh, that explains the lack of OPs and the graphic porn being posted all over the place.

And wait, if you're here, but not there, because it's a holiday...
TIME PARADOX!

I've been having the same trouble recently when I try to use Chat in SDC, which worked fine for me for a couple years. I kind of suspect I did something sloppy with my firewall and I'm too lazy to try learning another IRC app just yet.

somebody should add Elemental to the chat feature on Impulse.