Nokia to Put Google Talk on its Linux Tablet

prostoalex writes "The next version of Nokia 770 Linux-based Internet tablet with WiFi support will feature Google Talk with VOIP in its next release, MSNBC reports. The device is priced to sell at $390, and both Google and Nokia agree that right now it might appeal only to niche markets. In related news, however, it means Google's GTalk client will be ported to Linux, even if it's Nokia 770-specific software architecture."

Comments

gtalk = jabber + voice

[endx7]

The google talk protocol is little more than jabber with a few other goodies thrown in such as voice chat. So really, right now, the only thing you miss under linux with the google talk service is the voice chat since you can use a client such as gaim or any of the multitude of other jabber clients under linux.

Re:gtalk = jabber + voice

[mattyrobinson69]

Google Talk is jabber, with their voip extension to jabber. Their voip extension to jabber was released as an open standard, and is-being/has-been integrated with gaim.

Re:gtalk = jabber + voice

[michael186]

Kopete and Gaim are both working on voice support for Google Talk. Who's to say that Nokia aren't going to use one of these projects?

Re:gtalk = jabber + voice

[nurmr]

And the Psi team have a working implementation of Jabber-Jingle (the standard evolved from what gtalk are using) running on Linux. They've successfully made calls from Psi to GTalk, etc.

Re:gtalk = jabber + voice

[Baloo Ursidae]

BZZT! Wrong! GTalk=Jabber - vCard support. Google's lack of user directory is what's preventing them from joining the IM Federation right now. Jabber has voice support, it's called Jingle. Google contributed it to the XMPP standard.

Re:gtalk = jabber + voice

[ciroknight]

Well you could have at least linked to Jingle, the library you are talking about. There are also standards available to implement your own version, if you don't like Google's code.

does it matter?

[Walter Carver]

I don't think it's important. Since Gtalk uses the Jabber protocol, there are already good clients for Linux. Google even explains how to make Gaim work with Gtalk.

Re:does it matter?

[GuyWithLag]

Oh, they do make money from gmail all right - they sell ads. Targetted, usually relevant ads, but they do get paid for them.

In Related News...

[gral]

With Gaim already ported to Nokia 770, you can talk to people on GTalk servers through Jabber already, provided of course you already have a Jabber account.

Re:In Related News...

[ploss]

But you cannot _speak_ to them, which is the real news. You can still chat using the Google Talk servers through gaim (which is what I do currently, see this article for setup information.)

Lack of built-in VoIP was the only thing keeping me from seriously considering buying one of these cool little devices, as well as lack of a built-in keyboard, until it was pointed out that a bluetooth keyboard would work. This would be a very handy device to have, if not only for random web-browsing in-between classes and such, checking email, etc.

Not necessarily GTalk...

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

it means Google's GTalk client will be ported to Linux

Not necessarily. The maemo roadmap has said for some time that the next release will have Telepathy support -- which means a GoogleTalk client. That's not necessarily GTalk...

Re:no GSM

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

By your logic Nokia should still make all their products out of rubber -- they used to be a rubber manufacturer after all.

More seriously, Nokia doesn't want to end up as a puppet for the telcos, and moving to products that work over IP is one of the ways they can achieve that.

Invite?

[tepples]

Gtalk requires Gmail. Does a Gmail invite code come free with each purchase of a tablet?

Re:Invite?

[Rude Turnip]

You don't need an invite anymore for Gmail. My guess is because Google's engineers got sick of reading all the "can someone send me a Gmail invite?" posts while slacking off on Slashdot, Fark, et al. Honestly, the Gmail invite requests were almost as annoying as those free iPod links.

Re:MOD +1 INFORMATIVE, I'VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A RO

[slashdotmsiriv]

That was the most informative post I have ever seen in /. ... Gaim supports Jaber, gtalk is Jaber, all gaim needs to do is support gtalk's extension for voip. Wow man thnx for letting us know, +1 informative from me too. Every morning, every day more I learn ... Seriously now, democracy sometimes does not work well and /.'s new moderation system is an example of this.

Great, but ...

[Qwavel]

That sounds great but it leaves some big questions:

- Will the new software be available to users of the current Nokia 770?

- The article says that users will not be able to call regular PSTN phone numbers. It is understandable that Nokia would want to prevent this, but how can they stop users from using GoogleTalk with a generic VoIP to PSTN service (since GoogleTalk uses SIP).

- Will this GoogleTalk be available to users of Desktop Linux? Will Google be open-sourcing GT?

I guess we'll have to wait till Tuesday (at least) until there is much to say.

Re:Great, but ...

[LiquidCoooled]

Regarding question 1,

From the Nokia 770 site:
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet's software is upgradeable and currently runs on the Linux-based Internet Tablet 2005 software edition. There is a planned launch next year of an operating system upgrade - the Internet Tablet 2006 software edition - that will support additional services, including Internet telephony (VoIP) and Instant Messaging.

As for your second question, I would think that a "normal" user couldn't do it, but since as you point out the protocol is open, its down to whatever can be built for it.

I would imagine that the gTalk port won't need lots of private code, but to be sure find Chris DiBona and have a word.

Re:Gaining ground

[reldruH]

Has Google Talk finally been integrated with AIM? I heard about that last year and I'm still waiting for it to happen. As soon as it does I'm ditching AIM completely, but I haven't heard anything new on the AIM front for a while. In fact, the last thing I heard was that there wasn't going to be complete integration. Here's a good summary

Re:Will be ported to Linux...

[catch23]

if you want to source, go to jabber.org and download one of the many existing clients.

hmmm

[Mad_Rain]

Right now, I'm seeing a number of different posts saying "so what? Gtalk is just jabber, and it already works with eleventy-hundred other IM programs. Just use Gaim or Kopete or something to connect." The point that is interesting to me is that the Gtalk client, and specifically the VOIP component of the Gtalk client will be ported to Linux. Currently, if you want VOIP, you have to use the Windows client. Please, Google, get this done, and make it possible for other IM clients to use the VOIP as well. Gaim and Kopete have been taking forever to get this functionality into their clients.

Re:hmmm

[Mad_Rain]

I amend my previous statement. But like many users, I was holding out for a "it just works" solution. I find that Tapioca has "won the race" (at least for me) to incorporate VoIP functionality. To my knowledge, more popular IM clients have not managed to do this. Gaim has been working on incorporating this since October, and it's still not going to get done until after the 2.0 release, which has been in beta for about 6 months. Psi is a little closer, but requires some compiling to complete, as does the plugin for Kopete. Tapioca has debian/ubuntu packages and Fedora/Suse/Mandriva rpms ready to go.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

With the brand recognition of Google maybe the cell providers won't be able to simply disable the feature and pretend they are selling the same phone.

Not an issue.

That's what is Big Picture Cool(tm) about this. The 770 is not a phone in that it does not have GSM or CDMA aboard and does not interact with (or require) a telco at all. Imagine the PSP except built by people who are not obsessed with fucking over the end user.

Currently you might by a camera phone and find that, while it takes fine pictures, you can't get those pictures off without paying extortionate data rates. The reason is not that Nokia (or Mot or Samsung...Sony/Eriksson is a different story) wants to screw you or that they can't easily provide a standard USB cable. The reason is that they sell their phones to the carriers and the carriers DO want to screw you.

Enter the 770. The carriers have no more say in what this device does than they do with my laptop. T-Mobile can't say "break the WiFi or we won't sell it" because they couldn't sell it anyways. There's still a need for VoIP provisioning and routing but neither that provisioning nor the device itself is bound to a provider the way a traditional cell phone is. This is exactly the device that the carriers have been panicking about.

GPLTalk

[Doc Ruby]

If Google releases a Linux GTalk under GPL, the rest of us can make it work on other hardware. Like a Treo running Linux.

Re:770 sucks it hard

[int19h]

If that are the main reasons for lousyness, I think I might buy one.

770 is great, but not perfect by any stretch

[donscarletti]

As a Nokia 770 user, I say none of those things are an issue

1. Recent firmware mainly fixed bugs, I didn't really care what was in it
2. Wireless works great with WPA over here, full support out of the box, unlike most PC linux distros. I don't know what problems you are having.
3. Wireless remains connected until one either shuts it off or closes the cover, unless you have a usage timeout set.

My main objections would be:

1. Though it is very power efficient when running (6 hours with just the screen on, 6 hours with just wifi or 4 hours with both), standby consumption is so great that it needs to be charged every three days even if used only sporatically, the device shuts down completely if left in standby for a week. My Nokia 1110 can do triple that.
2. Although both the onscreen keyboard and the handwriting recognition is done well, neither of them are anything compared to a good keyboard, but the 770 cannot have a keyboard that isn't bluetooth (expensive).
3. I think the file manager needs a little bit of work, it tends to become just a tad unstable and/or unresponsive when browsing files, especially over bluetooth.
4. The bus between the CPU and the screen is awefully slow, it kinda makes it sucky for being the "multimedia device" it is advertised as. Videos need highspeed fullscreen transfers, that's all there is to it.
5. The zippy DSP is no substitute for a big fat main core, the DSP is especially useless for an open souce targeted system since the SDK for said chip is expensive. If this is such a multimedia capable device, give us a nice fast ARM core like a recent Intel XScale (maybe Monahans), or maybe even an ARM with an FPU (yes, they exist) so we can get some performance with flash.
6. RS-MMC, WTF? I have only ever seen one of these elusive creatures and that is the tiny one that shipped with the 770 itself. I desperately want a GiB of extera flash, but I can't find it anywhere in Sydney, it totally sucks. If only they had allowed it to be a milimeter fatter in breadth they could have stuck a full size SD card reader in it or left it the same size and supported MicroSD or hell, even left it the same socket but allowed it to read with its door open so it could support a real sized MMC hanging out the back of it.
7. The GTK fork they use is a little infuriating, mainly it is exactly the same as its full size cousin, but sometimes there is something they just changed a little and it will piss you off for days before you find out what it is, like how they butchered trees or their abominable new widgets that have no signals that can be attached, WTF? That's plain AWEFUL!
8. They use GStreamer, awesome, that means it will support all of the extensive array of codecs GStreamer does right? Well no actually, it doesn't support OGG in its core media subsystem for one. Apparently Nokia didn't trust the legalities of OGG, but if that is the case, they should make it easy to install a plugin yourself, they don't. All GStreamer plugins should be able to be installed whether Nokia likes them or not, if you don't want to be associated with something, that is fine, but don't stop me from installing it.
9. The user base is very small, so if you write something cool, hoping people will use it, that is not as likely as you might think. I spent days writing a game specifically for it but it was very hard to get anyone interested in testing it. That kind of made me depressed to think that possibly the total amount of time people will spend playing it is less than the time it took to write. I'm not sure how much more development work will happen with it.

But all in all, despite some of these weaknesses, it's a great little gadget, it is fun and actually verges on the almost useful in rare occasions. If you want something that lets you have the web, email and some multimedia in your pocket along with some games and the l