Mattie recently got me using a neat little site called Chatterous.
It's a very neat collaborative chat site that lets you recieve group chats via your browser (on the site), IM (for example google messenger), email or text. This is rather good for small groups spread across the world: because all the previous chat is archived youi can always pick up the conversation.
To cap that you can be signed up in seconds because they only require you to confirm an email address etc. if you want to use the email service. If all you want to use is the site chat boxes then you can sign up in well under 30 seconds!
Hopefully this litle service will go a long way!
(PS yes this is my "lets catch up with all the posts I meant to make over the weekend" day :))