January 24, 2006
One thing you don't know about Google Talk
There have been many comparisons of the various messaging clients available today: Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and hybrid ones as well, such as Trillian. These studies usually do a good job at comparing the features offered by these clients, but for some strange reason, I have yet to find one that really nails the one thing that makes the difference for me with Google Talk: presence ubiquity.
Throughout the day, I typically move between three or four different PC's (work, laptop, home, etc...) and this particular feature means that not only do I not need to log on constantly, it also means that I can start a conversation home and finish it at work without having to do anything. The logic behind the message broadcasts is sometimes a bit mysterious, but it works most of the time and is a joy for computer vagabonds like myself.
Since no article ever mentioned this feature, I am guessing my situation is pretty unusual, but since it's the only one that only exists in Google Talk, I am stunned that it hasn't been emulated by any other client.
Having said that, I do agree that Google Talk is very austere and I have to confess an unending fondness for Yahoo's cute smileys, but presence ubiquity is the main reason why my Friends List on Google Talk keeps getting bigger why my Yahoo's Buddy List has been stagnant for over a year now. People who need to reach me now know that Google Talk is the first client to try. If they don't know where I am, Google Talk certainly does.
Of course, the fact that Yahoo keeps nagging me about upgrading without giving me a chance to opt out and that it will change my home page if I'm not careful during the installation doesn't help. It could be worse, though: you could install AOL Instant Messenger and spend the next ten minutes hunting down and killing all the "Free AOL" shortcuts that suddenly pop up in unexpected places on your desktop. I hear their latest experimental version, codenamed Triton, goes even further and changes your home page, installs Plaxo, a toolbar and a modified full-screen version of IE that lands on their page. Oh and you can't refuse the installation of this software: you will need to uninstall it by hand later.
That's clearly not "not evil".
I feel some comfort thinking that Google Talk uses open standards and doesn't
come with any additional baggage, but I wouldn't mind if it added some of the
bells and whistles found in its competitors. How about them smileys for a start,
?
The other day I was trying to find some info on getting WLS 9 working on OSX. I've checked if Rod Chavez (from BEA) ever did a followup to his old WLS 8.1 article on O'ReillyNet. After some digging I realized that he is now working on Google Talk...
Posted by: Balazs Fejes at January 24, 2006 01:18 PMGTalk seems to keep friends as "Available" when they're clearly not available. For example - I'm currently sat on a train using web/GTalk over GPRS. I've left a friend at the bar, yet his presence says "Available".
Also, when I set my message to "On Train" during the morning commute, and then to "@work" (laptop to desktop), it takes someone to actually send a message before their client realizes to change their message. I've had people say to me "long train journey???"
I've submitted (and helped fix) bugs in GTalk, but these are such ephemeral bugs, it's difficult to create a succinct bug report.
Posted by: RichB at January 24, 2006 03:11 PMThere is nothing to compare with having a conversation that crosses three or four computers and maintains context for both or all parties. Of all the things that came out of jabber.org/com, that has to be high on the list of great ideas.
That said, I have been told by some very smart people, that presence ubiquity is not to be taken seriously. For one of these people, it was the very definition of why "our company would never use an XMPP (Jabber based) product. XMPP will loose out in the messaging war, and you (me) will be amongst the people who have to reimplement. Just plain stupid."
These very same smart people all use gtalk now. Go figure :)
Posted by: Kevin at January 24, 2006 03:44 PM> How about them smileys for a start, ?
http://www.projetobms.net/GTPlug.php?pagina=pj&lang=en
AOL Instant Messenger allows you to sign on from multiple computers. Is this what you mean?
Posted by: Keith Lea at January 25, 2006 09:04 AMI've been pretty furious with Yahoo's invasiveness lately, espically the toolbar they keep wanting to install, but it sounds like AOL has beat them at their own game.
Maybe I will move to google--I tried it at first and it was just not very impressive, but give 'em a few more months and I'm sure they will come out on top as usual.
Umm, looks like the last firefox upgrade disabled spellbound, so I'll go ahead an apologize for any spelling errors...
Posted by: Bill Kress at January 26, 2006 09:53 AMThe only reason I use gtalk is because its voice features. Other than that, yahoo msg beats gtalk hands down. I only upgrade yahoo when there are some useful features in the next release. About invasive s/w, have you seen JDK? It constantly asks me to upgrade with the annoying bubble in the system tray even though I have the latest JDK installed. There is no option to not remind me later. To me, system tray is just untouchable territory. I don't like if some small pesky application has a presence there. It should be only used by apps which run all day but you don't want them to be shown all the time.
Posted by: Gaurav Chawla at January 26, 2006 06:37 PMPerhaps one of the reasons articles on GTalk miss this feature is that it appears to not really be talked about... which is to say, there is nothing about it on GTalk homepage, or on the about page, or on the getting started page, and possibly not in the help section either though i haven't waded through it all. Of course it could just be I'm missing it somewhere.
Posted by: Josh at January 31, 2006 02:45 PMGaurav, I bet you have the latest JDK installed, but that doesn't mean the latest JRE is installed and active too... Maybe it was not installed, or, another software you installed was bundled with a older JRE release and has overridden at install the JRE settings. Several JRE's can coexist together, but the last installed one is the "default" one. If I'm permitted, I'd suggest you crosscheck the update settings in "ContolPanel > Java". In "ControlPanel > Add & Remove Programs" (in some internationalised versions called "> Software") you could take look to see exactly which JDK and JRE versions are installed. To find out which version is the "default" one, try "java -version" in a command prompt window. Hope this helps.
Posted by: Victor Ott at February 7, 2006 12:05 AMJabber protocol simply supports this nice presence ubiquity feature, and it has been around for years. Why everything once picked up by google will become a phenomenon?
I love gtalk for its light-weighted packaging and integration with GMail, nice voice quality. I wish the video will be out soon.
Obviously, GTalk uses the same voice codec as Skype .
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Posted by: alooshi at July 8, 2006 09:02 AMHey Guys,
As u people hav been discussing abt Gtalk and somebuddy mentioned tht he has been using gtalk via GPRS....can u suggest me someclient that i can use for my phone too i.e some Java app. or something like tht ..no symbian apps ..as i got a Ming(Motorola A1200)
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