I suppose I would be considered grossly negligent if I didn't comment on the recent release of Google Talk (Google's new IM service). I have four observations:
1) Why? I can't see anything that Google offers over most other IM services. It's a contact list, text messaging, notifications, voice and... well, that's it.
2) Beta? I don't think so! Someone needs to give the Google folks a re-education about what it means to be alpha or beta. Given the skeletal / simplistic feel of Google Talk and the long list of things they say they are still planning to add, it's definitely an Alpha, not a Beta. Maybe they're planning on releasing Google Talk Charlie, instead.
3) No emoticons! I wonder if people are already complaining 24/7 about no emoticons. ;)
4) What's the catch? Make no bones about it, Google is a very profitable company with high profit expectations. How does this IM program fit into their company? They say there won't be ads. Is it just a way to get more people to use gmail (since it requires a gmail account) and to put Google in front of more eyes all the time? I feel like there's a motive we haven't seen yet...
Maybe it will be cool later, but for now, it's rather simplistic. Am I missing something?
Yeah think u left out its not worthy to called a messenger.. Love how the :-) smile is colored lol being Sarcastic. Google Talk is all talk but like you said maybe it will be cool later.
I think that to expect every product Google ships out to be a show-stopper is naive, and the high expectations are probably the reason why you don't see GTalk's successes.
What need does GTalk fulfill? All the major IM clients today suck, for differing reasons. GTalk loads quickly, uses little memory, and automatically has a large user base -- because it's backed by Google. It's a no-crap IM client; the only features it has are those needed for productive communication.
I believe they would call it beta because it already has enough functionality to be a standalone product, yet hasn't gone through any use by the world-at-large yet. The naming really doesn't matter; consider the 'beta' to mean 'new!' if you want.
For a company whose mission is to make the world's information available, IM should make sense. They already handle your 'slow' communication, e-mail, so why not your instant communication? The next step, of course, is to index these conversations and make them available via their Desktop Search application, which I'm sure it either does or will in the near future.
Share files, documents, and letters via Gmail. Chat live with text or voice via GTalk. What area of our lives will they simplify next?
about point #2...BitWise has been in the alpha/beta stages for individual releases many times...and that was when there were still many planned features. So...I think this is exactly the same thing...they're in Beta simply because it's not complete. Alpha = buggy. Beta = no major bugs/not full of features. Makes sense to me.
Yeah, so you caught me, I wrote a purposefully sensational headline and went a little over the top. So sue me. :)
I still think the product is pretty early--reminds me of something like BitWise Alpha 3 or so. ;)
I have experienced one really nasty bug; when I log in, it totally locks up my computer for about 15 seconds. I suspect it's because I have 11,000+ messages in my gmail inbox (I use it as my personal listserv archive). Shouldn't lock up my whole computer though...
It remains to be seen what will come of google talk, but what does it have going for it?
* user base (it's google afterall)
* infrastructure (huge investment already)
* open source, at least for text chats (write your own client application, it uses jabber protocol! Not to mention most integrated IM clients already work with google chat on day one.)
* voice (although I have yet to try this, and it's currently only available for windows, which is why I haven't tried it)
For the free IM services, it does have the potential to become one of the better IM services out there.
It's not the same market really as bitwise... google's going after the free open IM market (at least so far... I wouldn't be surprised to see a business version via an appliance, just like there are google search appliances), where bitwise focus is more on the professional security dependant market.
i had a chance to try out voice. it works great. thats all :-)
...actually, just so this isnt a wasted comment. i tried it with a friend across the country for about 30min or so, but we were both on broadband. im curious to see how it would perform on 56k to 56k. it worked as well as well as the BitWise voice chat...thats the best thing i can compare it too.
It was easy to invite all my contacts and those that don't use it have a mailto: button.
It gives a pop up for each gmail message with a link straight to the message (not the inbox like yahoo), then they replaced the gmail menu with 1 inbox link giving it a bit of a neked look. ^_^
It's mostly an email program but made me think of bitwise actually.
What I hate about most IM programs is the appear offline feature. People that log in and log out 1 sec later. "oh, I must appear offline", appear offline to this contact is even more insulting.
The whole status thing is a security hazard really. It shows what time you leave the house.
So I think it should take "being online" to see who is online. Need to know who knows your status.
Maybe requesting all contacts statuses should not be something that just happens. What if we had a button to do this? So we could appear offline on a per request basis.
I introduced a friend to bitwise and he uninstalled it because he never used it, I explained that wasn't strange since he was never online with it. He stated that he didn't want me to know exactly when he was home what time he goes to bed ect. non of my business. And he was right. Then I see myself type "hi, are you here?" every now and then.
I think this should be a button. So that a contact should have to click "appear offline" each time his status is requested.
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I've been using the yahoo360 blog service witch has a lot features for friends on that same service. I specially like how they visualized the updates for the blogs of my yahoo contacts.
The thing I like least about bitwise is that it has no online status message. Yahoo messenger allows some text + an url, the text then becomes click able. I use this to link my contacts to a new blog post sometimes.(it's extra work that I forget)
What if bitwise Could display the rss of our blogs for status message? I think 20 words of the top news item with a read more link would be fantastic. Just an xml icon each and a save OMPL would be great.
Skype responded with a web tool that acts like a remote control for the client. The call to button does not pop-up the client but just makes the call.
So gmail moved the gmail menu from the webpage to the chat client and skype moved the menu from the client to the webpage. hahaha
So now you should move the menu of my blog onto bitwise and the bitwise buttons onto firefox.
Make it so that we can click the yellow BWC icon on the webpage to track the contacts webpage from the client status.
Then make it a bit more pretty by adding (optional) Icons that open things like wikipedia google yahoo flickr gmail. Just a 16x16 logo is enough to see what it is, we know the google logo by now. :-P
You could also wrap it with a skinning tool as a free software package.
Could make your own version of google maps. Like the one I used here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blog360/
Click "export to google earth" under the map.
Maybe you could like geo tag us or something?
I talked with a fellow from Argentina the other day who is on a poor connection, and voice was still great.
should have a read here...
http://www.google.com/talk/developer.html#developer
mind the # it jumps down to the right header. ^__^
Lot of people looking around for a good google talk client.
I know I'm going to catch flak for this but those of you that use crap like Google Talk, GMail, and the like...you're selling your soul to the Devil. Google is in the business of privacy invasion. You're naive if you read Google's privacy policy and say, "Oh, it's only computers reading your mail!" or "Oh, it's just for advertising." Let me ask you something, if you were granted access to the entirety of people's private information, would you strictly use it for benign advertising? What about information on your enemies? Thought not.
Those of you that claim, "Oh, every free service reads your mail. It's just Google is the only one to admit it." are absurd, too. The very fact that no other service admits to it means they are solely responsible if they get caught. Google; however, is totally free to ransack your private communications and use them for whatever purpose they don't wish to tell you about.
Google- the new Microsoft: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/26/google_as_microsoft/
Electronic Privacy Information Center's GMail FAQ: http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html
Stop letting the GBs of storage and brand name blind you. If you continue to be Google's customer, the day will come where it's too late to turn back and suddenly, your dental records are in a master Google database.
It appears that Kevin Maney shares some of Eva's skepticism about Google. They could very well be the next Microsoft. Everyone loved Microsoft in the beginning too. How about now?
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2005-08-30-google-microsoft_x.htm
Interesting blog Kevin... I for one am with you on this. Maybe they do need a little re-edumucation... ;) I'll never touch their google talk, but I do have to admit that I have a gmail account. Altough I'm not using it that much at all right now.