In progress 

Overview

The help would be accessed using an IM client(gaim or one designed especially for this purpouse) that supports the xmpp (jabber) protocol. On the server end, a bot would be handling the messages. The bot would ask some simple questions and based on the users responses provide answers to the most common problems. If the bot isn't capable of helping the user, the question could get forwarded to real people.

User end

The user would use either the IM client provided in Ubuntu, or a simplified version. To the user this would be very close to chatting.

The bot

Contacting real people

Advanced stuff

• Could be used as a bugbuddy.
• If a custom client is created, a screenshot utilty could be integrated. Transfering the file automagically to the bot using xmpp would make the progress of explaining the problem/bug to another person easier.
• Since the dialog-script between for the bot is in VoiceXML, the scripts could be reused in a VoIP version later on.