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Google Talk Available Early

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the resourceful-users dept.

smash writes "Google's new IM service is already live. All you need is a Jabber-compatible Instant Messaging client (such as Apple's iChat, or gaim), and a GMail address." This should answer, at least in part, all of the speculation that has been flying around the net over the last couple of days. Update: Many users have been eager to let us know that Google Talk in indeed live.

8 of 897 comments (clear)

  1. Gmail by bobsacks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any word on when Gmail is going to go public? Last I heard google news was waiting because of it's inability to create revenue because they were using other peoples news or some such. But the mail portion has adds and the like, so I guess it is able to make revenue.

    1. Re:Gmail by _Splat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not exactly.. it's similar to how a bank doesn't have enough cash to pay out every account at once... they assume that most people will only use a small fraction of their space, and only allocate that much. If everyone decided to fill up their Gmail accounts all at once, there would be trouble.

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      -Splat
    2. Re:Gmail by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've played around with a "social networking" site (thefacebook.com) which used to have -- and perhaps it's back now, I'm not sure -- a really neat feature. It would give you a zoomable 2-D representation of your social network as an SVG file.

      The SVG part isn't important (I was never really clear why they picked this format over any other vector format...) but the idea was pretty cool. With yourself at the center you could see who was near you in the social structure of the network, and who they were closely associated with, etc.

      I never used the service long or heavily enough to develop a very robust social network (and not enough of my friends used it to make a very good model of the real world) but this is not so with email. Practically everyone I know, with the exception of a few older or particularly Luddite relatives, I've emailed at one point or another.

      It would be neat to have a program that scanned your email archives (with Gmail this wouldn't be too hard, since all mail is retained in the archive unless manually deleted) and constructed a social network from it. If I were going to design it, I'd make "closeness" be the frequency of emails, and the angular separation between two people who both talk to a third based on the number of shared keywords in their emails. That way you'd end up with all your business associates off in one direction (say all radiating away from you within a few degrees of each other) but your family, with whom you probably use few words in common with your business emails, in a different direction entirely.

      If the program could scan people's emails recursively -- assuming they were all on Gmail and had suitably large archives of email -- you could create a pretty neat social model that would actually be reflective of the real world.

      Of course, the privacy issues surrounding something like that would be gigantic. People get all creeped out by Gmail scanning emails and then presented targeted advertising...I doubt they'd tolerate a system that scanned all their archived email in order to produce a graphical model, even if it was semi-anonymous.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  2. Made Clear? by Azarael · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The reasoning behind google sponsoring so many people to work on GAIM for summer of code? Maybe they will release a gaim based client?

  3. Re:Now spy on your friends! by Indianwells · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Exactly! Google will now have a reocrd of: 1. Your web searches 2. Your email 3. You im conversations If google were the government would you be afraid?

  4. GoogleTalk + Dark Fibre = Internet Phone System by Spinlock_1977 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google Talk ... and all that dark fibre Goggle has been buying up? This isn't just about instant messenger - Google is building the next voice communications network! With their new WiFi hotspots - it could be wireless voice communications (at least if you're in a major center).

    Bee-bee-boo-boop "Picard to all phone companies: You are being replaced."

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    - The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
  5. Re:ugh, throw it on the heap... by atomm1024 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    True, but that doesn't actually protect your conversations from Google. People connected between your Internet connection and Google's server won't be able to monitor your conversations, but Google itself will, which is just as undesirable. Another reply has already mentioned Off-The-Record Messaging, a good solution for existing systems.

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    Signature.
  6. clue to easter egg in client? "play wumpus game" by sp1der · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the Google Talk client, in the icon tray, select About. Notice on the bottom light grey characters on the which background. They read: "play 23 21 13 16 21 19 7 1 13 5" Using a=1, z=26, it translates to: "play wumpus game" Not sure what to do with it, just thought it was interesting that it was there. Investigating...