IM Watch » Google Talk

Google Talk Themes

IM Watch — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:38:22 +0000

Recently, we reviewed the new Google Talk. In that article, we mentioned that it now had themes. However, the themes are, well, boring. Anthony Sottile has the answer. His page is full of themes. There’s a Blue Screen of Death theme, a PHP theme, a Windows 9.x theme, a digg theme, a Bubble Picture theme, and even a Star Wars theme!

Using the OFFICIAL Google Talk program to connect to everyone else

IM Watch — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:12:00 +0000

Want to use the official Google Talk program to connect to others? Here’s how:

Get Psi from here.

Connect to Google Talk using Psi by going here.

Add the following transports to Psi:
For MSN: njs.netlab.cz (use the MSN transport)
For AIM: njs.netlab.cz (use the AIM transport)
For Yahoo!: njs.netlab.cz (use the Yahoo! transport)
For ICQ: im.flosoft.biz (use the ICQ transport)

You can delete Psi, just don’t delete the transports and contacts.

Download the OFFICIAL Google Talk program from http://talk.google.com/.

You friends will be shown something like this:
usernamehere%hotmail.netlab.cz
usernamehere@aim.netlab.cz
usernamehere@yahoo.netlab.cz
usernamehere@icq.im.flosoft.biz

Happy chatting!

Google Talk

IM Watch — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 00:13:02 +0000

GTalk has been updated! Now with buddy icons, chat window design, and more! Google Talk for Blackberrys has also been released, so get that as well. And the developer of Gaim has announced Libjingle 0.3!

Review of Gtalkr Beta For All Platforms

IM Watch — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:11:18 +0000

Now here’s a real cool portal to the World Wide Web. Gtalkr is a free site that supports SSL, and has access to Gmail. It can also communicate with Google Talk users through chat (though not through audio). Here’s what we found:

Voice: None.
Video: None.
File Transfer: None.
Smileys: None (but has rich text).
Games: None. Well, it has Flickr and YouTube, as well as Yahoo! Maps and RSS, but no real games.
Interface: Subpar. Might be slow on dialup.
Bottom Line: Gtalkr looks promising, but I’ll stick with Gmail chat.

Google Talk and other Messengers

IM Watch — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:18:07 +0000

Want to connect Google Talk to other messengers? Here’s some how-tos:

For no extra charge: Buddy Icons!

Psi

IM Watch — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:48:09 +0000

If you want a multi protocol IM program that isn’t Gaim, try Psi. It is a Jabber client that can connect to the Big Four, and several other clients. You can also get Jingle Branch, which lets you use audio when chatting to Google Talk. A bigger review will come soon, but meanwhile read on to connect to the Big Four. This is from http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/google-talk-news/33739-connect-google-talk-aim-msn-yahoo.html.

Connect Google Talk to AIM, MSN, & Yahoo

Posted by Jeff | 01-23-2006, 12:34 AM |

Google has announced plans to get Google Talk and AIM talking, but with a little elbow grease you can do that and more today.

Now that Google has opened up their Google Talk servers for federation with other Jabber servers, you can use Google Talk to connect to your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo or ICQ. Here’s how, step-by-step with screenshots.

First, download and install the free Jabber client called Psi. It’s a fine Jabber client, and you might want to keep it, but you won’t need to once you’ve set everything up. The Psi wiki has a great step-by-step for connecting to Google Talk. Follow their instructions and you’ll be able to see your Google Talk contacts.

Next, go to Service Discovery and browse the Jabber server ursine.ca and you’ll see the transports available.

Click on a transport and Psi will gather data.

Right-click on a transport to register. Registration involves entering your username and password for the given IM network. Once you do, Psi will connect to that network and retrieve your contacts. You can also add new contacts.

Once I had “registered” each of my IM accounts, I had a lot (hundreds?) of system messages.

Basically it asked me to confirm that I wanted to add each of these contacts. Once I did, they showed up in my Psi contact list.

Now exit Psi and fire-up Google Talk. You’ll have all your IM contacts right there on your Google Talk contact list.

Once you’ve done so, you can chat with your friends on AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN — all using Google Talk. You can also add contacts directly within Google Talk. Just use the format [screenname]@[transport.dns.name]. For example, to add my MSN screen name you would enter jeff@msn.ursine.ca

What’s the deal with ursine.ca? You can use any Jabber server you’d like — you’ll find a complete list here at www.jabber.org/network/ — ursine.ca was just the server I used.

This process works, although in my experience, the MSN transport has not been reliable. One of my friends reported an weird “echo” effect. Everything she typed was returned back to her as if from me (I saw none of her messages). I’ve also sent IMs to MSN contacts, only to have them immediately appear “offline.”

As with any of these kinds of hacks, your mileage may vary. But you’ve got to admit — it is very cool to be able to use Google Talk as a universal IM client.

Resources

Download Psi – Configure for Google Talk
Download Google Talk
Kudos to Aaron in the Google Talk Help Discussion group

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Review of Google Talk ? (Windows 2000, Windows XP)

IM Watch — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:25:44 +0000

We really like Google. When it came out with an IM, we immediatly downloaded it. Here’s what we found:

Voice: Subpar. But hey, how many other IM’s version 1 has audio?
Video: None. First generation, go to give it some room!
File Transfer: None.
Smileys: None. This is really not good. But hey, it’ll get some in 2.0!
Games: None.
Interface: Terrific. GTalk is the best interface we’ve ever seen.
Bottom Line: Google Talk’s interface is the best we’ve ever seen. It can also talk to Jabber users (no calls though), and Gmail users can chat without downloading it! But, you might want to wait for the next release.

Google Talk ? for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Screenshot: