If you haven't heard of Everything 2 or Perl Monks (or any other site that uses the Everything-engine, this won't help you much. However, if you have, and use the "chatterbox" feature on any of those sites, and become annoyed by its limitations, and the computer you're using can support Java, and you want to do something about it, and I've run out of reasons to say "and" with, then, you can say, "Yay!" (but not too loud, or people will think you're nuts)
Background
[nate] made Everything, and people were happy. :-)
Nate then made Everything 2, which was better than Everything 1, and more people were more happy. :-D
Nate then inserted a chatterbox nodelet, which let others using the site to talk to each other in (near) real time. And people were even more happy. :-O
However, as people were blabbering on more and more, it became hard to keep track of conversations, since only the last 10 messages were shown. This made some people sad. :-(
Then [N-Wing] (that would be me) said to Nate, "Let me have the chatter in XML format, and I'll make a Java client that will automatically refresh so people don't have to reload pages many times to keep up with the chatterbox, which will make users happy again, so there can be singing and dancing." (ok, I didn't say that exactly, but if you're going to misquote somebody, you may as well misquote yourself)
And Nate did. Well, kind of. He made [chatterbox XML ticker], although it isn't true XML, but at least it is close enough.
So I spent an hour and made the perfect [Java Chatterbox] that had every feature everybody could possibly want, all in a footprint of only 5k. However, it somehow vanished, so I had to do it all over, from scratch, but the agony of losing such a valuable program causes a pain so deep that I am unable to duplicate my former achievement. So people are stuck with the version I have now.
Get It
To download the source code (and eventually, also compiled class files), please visit the project page hosted on SourceForge.
You can also do things like report bugs and ask questions there.
Versions on SourceForge are generally stable - they should compile with no problems, and they have no major bugs.
Currently, version 0.1.11.0 alpha 1 on SourceForge is the most recent source version available.
Everything libraries
I've recently been moving as much Java Chatterbox code as possible into generic Everything libraries, so others that want to write Java programs that interface with [E2] don't have to write everything from scratch.
Currently, I've namespaced the libraries "npb.everything", although I intend to make it more "proper" in the future.
You can get them here.
Other Chatterbox Clients
After my client appeared on Everything 2, others wanted to make their own (I guess mine wasn't good enough :-P ).
A list of some are on Everything 2, under the node [chatterbox client].
Another site based on the Everything engine, but focused on Perl, created by vroom, was also introduced to the chatterbox and the ticker and a billion Perl chatterbox clients spawned into existence.
Miscellaneous
Oh yeah, did I mention that my chatterbox can also access other sites, besides just Everything 2? (you have to run it locally, though; browser security settings prevent applets from accessing other sites) (also, currently only one site at a time, even when run locally)
Also, a manual is on Everything 2 at [Java Chatterbox manual].