The Ruby on Rails IRC channel is a dedicated chatroom ideal for getting (and giving) real-time help. The channel name is #rubyonrails on irc.freenode.net:

irc://irc.freenode.net/#rubyonrails

You will need an IRC client like mIRC (Windows), ChatZilla, Colloquy (Mac), Smuxi (Linux/Windows) or any other in this list. Some messaging clients like Pidgin and Adium support IRC as well.