There are lots of free chat rooms and chat widgets. Most of them require you to sign up for an account and/or use Java. This is a list of easy setup, free chat rooms, with no registration required. Get a chat room to use instantly, or keep one around to use whenever you want an online meetup. These web apps let you setup a chat room and then invite people you want to chat with by sending them a web address / link.
http://www.babelwith.me - with multi-lingual instant translation, up to 45 languages. This means you can chat with non-English people instantly!
http://www.stinto.net - creates a free chat room with one click (actually it took me 4 clicks)
http://todaysmeet.com - setup a free chat room with ability to specify a duration and also a twitter hashtag
http://www.chatzy.com - With Chatzy you can create a chatroom and send out email invitations very quickly and easily. No registration is required.
http://www.everywherechat.com - this one is powered by Adobe Flash, and allows you to join existing rooms too
http://gabbly.com - this one lets you add a chat window while browsing a website, pretty nifty; for example, chat about this website by using the link http://gabbly.com/daily.djchuang.com
on another note, for entirely random chats with strangers, there’s http://omegle.com and http://chatroulette.com
