New Flavor of Google Talk: Lab Edition

Posted by Corvida On April - 6 - 2008

Yesterday, Google released a lab edition of Google Talk. Essentially, it’s a desktop version of the Google Talk gadget that can be added to your website.

What’s New?

Tabs, emoticons, group chat, and desktop notifications for:

Gmail
Google Calendar (with snooze option)
Orkut

google talk lab edition Of course there’s more, which they refrain from mentioning, but what I don’t see is support for voice and file transfer that the original desktop client supports. It also doesn’t sport the AIM integration that seems to only be found in the web versions, most notably within the Gmail chat client.

Why Isn’t This In The Desktop Version?

What I don’t understand is why Google saw the need to make another version of the Google Talk client instead of integrating this stuff into the desktop client?! When is the last time that thing had an upgrade anyway? Don’t you think it’s about time to merge your clients instead of spending your 20% time over there creating new versions of Google Talk, Google?! Are you listening to me, Google? I want AIM support and better emoticons in the original Google Talk desktop client!

Kudos to the Google Operating System blog for keeping me posted about it!

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Desktop Apps

jimi

i agree

They didn't do what you said because it's a bit more complex to do evidently. But since when has something being hard been a good excuse to not do something like that? :P

Fools. They make billions and they can't make a good little chat program? What the hell? I only use google talk because my friends insist on using it. We also chat using microphones on it. But I wanted Google Talk Gadget instead (or this Lab Edition) because they allow me to be online but to be invisible. I like that so my friends don't know how much of a geek I am :P

But I am forced to use two different programs to achieve this, which is silly. So they really should put some effort into combining the two. Their excuse I read somewhere sounded daft. And I also agree that they need to add some emoticons. I would also love to be able to change the volume of each chatter, because I have one friend who is extremely loud, and one friend who is very quiet. There is nothing I can do about this except crank my overall PC's volume which means my one friend deafens me, or I lower it and then I can't hear the quiet friend.

It's 2008 google, lets get this sorted out! :)

SheGeeks

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