Google Talk

You've probably heard of Google's instant messaging / voice messaging software called "Google Talk". I've seen more and more screenshots of people using Google Talk, either to test it out, or to use it extensively. I decided to check it out myself today, primarily because it works on the Jabber protocol, and I already have a Jabber account at jabber.org. In my research I found out that while Google Talk does use the Jabber protocol, the talk.google.com servers don't communicate with other Jabber servers. I was hoping I could use my preexisting @jabber.org account to chat with my @gmail.com friends, but have had no such luck. Google claims that they are working on it, and will update the service to support 3rd party servers, but they are still working out the kinks (like IM spam). So I will give this Google Talk thing a go, sans the voice functions. The nice thing is that if you already have a gmail account, then you already have a google talk account and you just add the account to your favourite jabber client.

I would still prefer that people add me under my "tiosc@jabber.org" account, but if you do use Google Talk, then you can add me under "dunnadam@gmail.com". It would be nice to use Jabber at least once to talk with someone! You can read more about Google Talk here, and you can find out how to add your account to the best instant messaging client here.