A persistent (archiving) live chat would be nice. There are plenty of batteries-included Java applets available in the FOSS world for this.

It'd sure beat the coordinating needed for IRC discussions...

There was: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/originaltrilogy-on-IRC/topic/4329/

*insert story*

And now there's this: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Does-the-IRC-channel-still-exist/topic/12231/

Maybe we should drift toward https://crypto.cat/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/crypto-cat-encryption-for-all/all/