Google Talk Information

Google Talk is a service offered by Google for Voice over IP and instant messaging. Google Talk beta was released on August 24, 2005 and consists of both a service and a client used to connect to the service. Unlike some other instant messaging services, Google Talk uses an open protocol (Jabber) for the IM part and it encourages the use of clients other than their own in connecting to the Google Talk service.

As of the launch date, the Google Talk client is available only for Windows (2000, XP, Server 2003); users of other operating systems are provided with instructions for various popular Jabber clients, such as Psi or Miranda IM for older versions of Microsoft Windows, iChat or Adium for Mac OS X and Gaim for Linux. However, any program capable of using the Jabber protocol is sufficient, although the voice over IP service only works with the Google client. Google claims they will release a specification for the voice extension in the near future.

Tips

• You can change the font size by focusing your mouse cursor either on the message window or input box, holding the control key down, and spinning the scroll wheel.

• Use the keyboard: Pressing Tab cycles through conversations in each stack and the main window. Ctrl+Tab or Shift+Tab cycles backwards.

• When you see a message notification, you can right click it to close it without focusing the conversation window.

• To make something bold, you must place an asterisk before and after the area you want to bold: *example* turns to example

• If you want to italicize something, you must place underscores around the area you want to italicize: _example_ turns to example

• Between one set of '*'s or '_'s, you can have up to and including 100 characters. If you exceed this number of characters, the effect will not take place and you will get normal text with the * or _ symbols visible at either end

• Typing a smiley like :) and :D in an IM window will make it turn bold blue like: :) and :D . Other valid smileys are :( :P :O :| :'( :x :-) :-D :-( :-P :-O :-| :-x .

• Preceding text with a symbol from the Hebrew alphabet, such as ? and ?, makes text bold and large.

• Surrounding text with \\ and // makes text clickable like a link but does not lead to any url.

These tips are a feature of the Google client and not Jabber in general. They will not work with all third party clients.

Features

Interoperability

Google has announced that a major goal of the Google Talk service is interoperability . Google Talk uses XMPP , the same protocol as Jabber servers, to provide real-time extensible messaging and presence events , including offline messaging and voice mailing. On January 17 , 2006 , Google enabled server-to-server communications, federating itself with any Jabber server that supports the dialback protocol.

Gmail integration

Chat with Google Talk in Gmail .

On February 7 , 2006 , Gmail received chat functionality, and was integrated with Google Talk. Users can send instant messages to other Gmail users. Because both Gmail and Google Talk use the Jabber network, Google Talk does not have to be downloaded to send instant messages to Gmail users.

Conversation logs are automatically saved to a Chats area in the user's Gmail account. This allows users to search within their chat logs easily, and to have them centrally stored on the Internet.

Whilst the chat featured was being distributed, users signing into Gmail were greeted with a message stating that the Instant Messaging features of Google Talk would be available within the Gmail page at some point in the next few weeks. [ citation needed ] As of April 2006, all Gmail users are able to turn on and turn off the instant messaging capabilities of the Gmail interface.

Voicemail and file sharing

On July 28 , 2006 , Google added voicemail and file sending capabilities to the Google Talk client. Voicemail messages can be 10 minutes long, and they're delivered to the contact's Gmail mailbox as an attached MP3 file (11 KHz mono 24kbit/s). Gmail recognizes that it's a voicemail message, and users can choose to stream the file using the integrated MP3-playing applet, or to download the MP3 file.

Music status

It is also possible to display the song currently playing on the computer. This music data is then collected, if the user agrees to this, and displayed on the Google Music Trends page.

Offline Messaging

On October 31 , 2006 , Google introduced offline messaging to Google Talk. This allows users to send messages to their contacts, even if they are not signed in. They will receive the messages when they next go online.

Orkut integration

Since November 8, 2006 , Google integrated Google Talk with orkut . This enables Google Talk users to interact with registered orkut users, by sending and receiving 'scraps' within orkut.

Google Desktop integration

Since its release, users have been able to integrate Google Talk and Google Desktop . In addition to providing chat, Google Talk replaces email notification and sending functions normally associated with the Gmail notifier module.