Attend Meetings from Your Wireless Device

Tuesday September 1, 2009

You can now participate in online 12-step support group meetings from your Smartphone or other mobile devices. The chat rooms at StepChat.com now provide mobile access for your iPhone, Blackberry, PDA or other mobile device.

The chat rooms at StepChat.com are the rooms that were previously hosted on the About.com Alcoholism site.

Each week, there are 76 online meetings scheduled at StepChat.com for members of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon Family Groups, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Narcotics Anonymous and other 12-step groups.

Available 24 Hours a Day

All of those meetings are now accessible by mobile device, as well as the "open chat" rooms, that are available 24 hours a day.

"It's not the most ideal way to attend a meeting, even an online meeting," said Karen N., one of the room moderators at StepChat.com. "But if you are away from home and you need a meeting, you can now participate from your Smartphone."

Rather than the usual Java-based chat, the mobile chat is browser based. The browser refreshes every few seconds so that mobile users can keep up with the new messages posted in the room.

New iPhone App Coming

A link on the StepChat.com home page, takes visitors to a mobile access page where they can find mobile access links to each of the 10 available chat rooms.

Later this year, an application will be available for iPhone users so they can chat with the app instead of having to use the Safari browser.

"There are email meetings, text chat meetings, voice chat meetings, video chat meetings, instant messaging meetings and now there are mobile device meetings," Karen said. "For those who want help and support, the hand of fellowship is always there."

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