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On the app store, are you looking at the India-only version?
Relevant link: https://m.hello.com/en/downloa...

This is why online webapps have no future. If someone shuts down the service you're using, you're completely screwed.

In the wake of recent releases of Google Desktop 2.0 Beta and Google Talk 1.0 Beta, Gmail now is finally open to everyone. Other exciting rumors suggest that Google may even try to compete with Internet Explorer by producing a product called GBroswer. Other Google features include Maps, Blogger, Hello, iGoogle, Google Earth, and Picasa. Now it appears they've produced a new Google Theme Song.

Are we really even sure that it isn't just the server for Hello?

Does anyone know if Hello will work with Google Talk? I don't feel like having to run Hello and Google Talk. However, if they do both work together, what would be the point of Google having both Hello and Google Talk?

The Hello Instant Messaging client is included with Picasa which is owned by google.

Cleverly it is used for picture sharing which avoids direct competition with the established IM clients.

http://www.hello.com/

Posting only because I dont have mod points to push the parent post all the way up to 5

They already have an IM service.

Anyone else wondering if they'll eventually use the new sidebar for another Hello-type client?

Sure they don't advertise it, but Hello is a Google product...

HELLO? What are you talking about?

;)

http://www.hello.com/

HELLO (Picasa share client)

I wonder if Apple's French language Bonjour download would be called Hello. I hope Google doesn't sue over this one.

Oh wait. Never mind. That might be perceived as evil.

The Google Philosophy.

"Do no evil" (now written as item 6)? The two most evil things that MS does - forced upgrades due to locked-in proprietary formats. 2) continually releasing buggy software.

Ok, so...google has all this stuff in "beta" right now. But with the public gmail "beta" being over a year old now...shouldn't it start working right? Yet some of my most simple filters (like, anything emailed to a particular list) still get applied to the wrong things (like things sent to me, and not that list). And though I'm seeing the "unavailable" message less and less now, I'm still occassionally seeing it...what happened to philosophy #10, "Great just isn't good enough?"

But even better yet...what about philosophy #2: "It's best to do one thing really, really well. Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." So instead of doing yet another thing, shouldn't some of the public betas come out of beta first?

Speaking of "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat," how about this financial advice? Or, how about this chat program?

Sounds like Google needs to do some *serious* revamping of their "philosophies." You'd think if they specifically mention 3 things they don't do, they could at least do everything in the world except those 3 things (and hell, they might be doing horoscopes out there somewhere I don't know of). Hey Google - how about ya get what is out there working right, before putting out more public betas?

I'm personally surprised that Hello hasn't gone to the presses yet as being the next big thing.

clickable link

Hello

Or Windows/Samba shares would be just as effective.

Hello (http://hello.com/) is really good for sharing pictures with complete idiots like your mom and dad. It automatically shrinks and recompresses the jpgs and lets you chat on the side. Great for my parents on dialup since it saves bandwidth, and if you want you can always selectively download the full image version from a few of the pics you are looking at. I havn't seen much else that is as easy and simple as Hello, but I havn't really looked for much. Email or ICQ or posting pictures on a webpage just don't cut it though.

They have "hello"

Google already has an IM client, Hello. Here is their website.

well, they have an IM by buying picasa. check it out here: http://www.hello.com/what_is_hello.php

Google already has an IM client. It's called Hello, and they got it when they bought Picasa.

Give it a shot.

It's a pretty neat app - not a general-purpose client per se. (not that that couldn't easily be fixed with a "compact mode".)

Did any of you people actually take a look at Hello? (the IM they acquired)

the main focus of this thing is photo sharing. Granted, it does so encrypted, which is a Good Thing, but doesn't that seem a bit ... unflexible? there are probably better IM solutions, with more possibilities and a wider range of features (no, i won't say Jabber .. don't make me ... NO i said!!!)

And where is the 'Search' focus of Google?

we've had searchable mail, Searchable desktop, ...
I'd hate it if people contacted me based on what they found in archived chatlogs of me.

Google's inching closer to a real Privacy-Soul-Sucking-Search!
remember 'the ads are generated by software?'

The IM client that Google purchased has more compelling graphics features. No avatars. Kinda neat. Nobody uses it. It's not integrated with AOL IM or Yahoo or MSN, but it beats finding a real imagehost for your blogspot blog, and if you have someone you actually want to talk to about pictures... it's perfect.

It's screenshot thing could actually make it handy for discussing GUI development... maybe.

You are very close. Go to http://images.google.com look at their new offering, an image search application for windows computers called Picasa. It integrates with a one-to-one chat program/P2P called Hello so you can share the pictures and discuss them online. I can't figure out where the profit comes in except the the language for the download of Hello says "try Hello for free" which might indicate a little pusher-mentality "here kiddies I have something that will make you feel good, would you like a taste?"

An OS is more than nifty apps, but they seem to be rolling out a lot more apps recently. Actually these look like purchases or perhaps Google is doing a little Angelling with their cash.

... and it is called Hello! Go check it out!

How would an instant messaging program be applicable to this mission?

Pictures. The catch would be pictures.

Hello? McFly? <bop-on-forehead>

Google recently bought Hello.com and has been supporting its instant messaging protocol, clients, etc. ever since the purchase. Hello's focus today is on Instant Messaging between people who share pictures, but they could open it up to a wider audience any time they wanted to. Thus, GOOGLE already has an IM client and protocol. As far as I know, the protocol is closed.

To see an example of Google/Hello IM Chatting, see: Google Chat

The question isn't whether or not Google should "adopt" XMPP, rather, the question is whether they should "change to it." My hope is that they will dump their proprietary system and switch to the XMPP IETF open standard as soon as possible.

bob wyman

Google recently bought Hello.com and has been supporting its instant messaging protocol, clients, etc. ever since the purchase. Hello's focus today is on Instant Messaging between people who share pictures, but they could open it up to a wider audience any time they wanted to. Thus, GOOGLE already has an IM client and protocol. As far as I know, the protocol is closed.

To see an example of Google/Hello IM Chatting, see: Google Chat

The question isn't whether or not Google should "adopt" XMPP, rather, the question is whether they should "change to it." My hope is that they will dump their proprietary system and switch to the XMPP IETF open standard as soon as possible.

bob wyman

Google owns Hello. This is a photo-oriented IM client that they got along with Picasa, the (excellent) iPhoto knockoff.

I hope everyone who just said Google doesn't care about IM kicks themself in the head. You dumbasses.

Hello is pretty, & it works with Blogger & Picasa. It is good Windows software, which is all that Google seems to be interested in for the desktop.

check it.. since May, you can use Picasa's Hello to upload pictures to be hosted by blogger.com for free

check me blog for it in action.
I think this article is just crap, though.

My man, you do not know what has been going down. Check this out. You run Hello and inside Hello a thing called BloggerBot runs.. like it's one of your friends on the Internet. You set it up so that when you share a picture with bloggerbot, it is posted to your Blogspot Blog. Google hosts the pictures at blogger.com for free. This shit is serious, my man. Picasa just ads extra to the part where you organize your photos before sending them out.

check me blog to see it in action.

When I logged into Blogger I discovered that "edit post" on my Mac in Firefox now has two tabs, one which shows more of a word-processing type interface, and one to work just with the HTML.

I suspect that one of the attractions of Picasa for Google was their Hello site which provides photo hosting for Blogger. As more and more people move to photoblogging, this may have been an easy way for Google to provide more functionality.