When I first went to college, one of the first uses I discovered for that fancy huge always-on network was the IM program ICQ. People sent me horrible wav files via file transfer (yes, before mp3 was common place), I received computer advice, and after much trial and error I met plenty of new people. Somehow as time went on I never chatted up anyone with a smaller ICQ number (4370462 - I know that number and not my last several phone numbers), and it has been years since I've even bothered to install ICQ (still the "best" IM program I've ever used - though admittedly bogged number with numerous unnecessary options at the time). I still use gaim, but now I am forced to use the networks of those two big guys (MSN and AOL) to talk with the few people I keep in contact with online. Today is finally that red-letter day that AOL's destruction of ICQ made nearly impossible in many minds - 10 years after my initial contact with IM, I am logged on to a massive, open standards IM system thanks to Google. I'm logged on right now and I have to urge everyone to make it their standard (and to welcome their Google overlords) because I will. Though already mentioned on slashdot, gaim instructions to follow in extended section.
Instructions from smash's world:
How to set it up with GAIM on Windows/Linux, or Adium on the Mac:
-- For iChat, just enter the information above.
1. Add an account, select "Jabber" as the protocol.
2. Your screen name is everything before the '@gmail.com'.
3. Server is 'gmail.com'.
4. Click "show more options" and make sure "use TLS if available" is checked. Leave "Force old SSL" and "allow plaintext..." unchecked for now. Connection port should be 5222, connection server should be 'talk.google.com' without the quotes.
5. Ta-da! Just login and you should be good-to-go.
http://talk.google.com is live now too.
My prediction--google is the first to really popularize VOIP online. They claim that they're quickly adding support for SIP, which will mean that a) people on different VOIP networks, and b) you'll be able to buy a "real" telephone handset to do VOIP calling with.
Posted by: lurp at August 24, 2005 12:53 AMWait. Is talk.google.com and GAIM the same thing? Because if I'm going to commit myself to meeting all these new people, then I certainly want to be on the same system they are.
Posted by: maggette at August 24, 2005 02:25 PMI doubt the sincerity of your question, but I realize that the less technically inclined who read this site may not grasp the importance of this development. Throughout (what I consider) the 10 year history of IM, there has been the interoperability issue of different networks and clients. If you believe what you read, the reason this is particularly important is that nobody "won" and dominated - since I imagine that AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc. have all claimed at some point (and probably concurrently) that they had the biggest network / user base. The beauty of the open-sourced Gaim (and other third party clients) is that they allowed you to manage all your contacts/idenities in a single client - even when the big boys didn't want you to. The further attractiveness now presented to us by talk.google.com is that it provides a network based on the open-standard Jabber - so anyone can write a client for this network - and pretty much everyone is already a member of it since everyone (and I do mean everyone) I know has a gmail account. Now the voice aspect of this is interesting because SIP is a standard, but does google want other parties using their network? This is probably well-known - I just haven't looked for the answer.
Posted by: shs4 at August 24, 2005 03:20 PMI write something than I immediately find the answer to my own question.
First, to show you how little I've been paying attention to IM - I wasn't fully aware that the Jabber community lead to the XMPP standard.
Second, on Google Talk's developer FAQ - as posted previously, they do attend to implement the open-standard SIP.
Posted by: shs4 at August 24, 2005 03:29 PMYou want a triple - I'll give you a triple.
Slashdot has an article posted linking to this LiveJournal article which gives a more intricate history of IM - and discusses a limitation of Google Talk with regards to Jabber.
Posted by: shs4 at August 29, 2005 05:26 PMI really don't understand people's fascination with server to server support. How many other popular Jabber servers are out there? The number is really close to 0. I can see why Google has left it out up to this point.
There are definitely more important features they could be working on, like offline messages, VOIP interoperability, file transers, etc. Server to server communication with other Jabber servers has to be pretty far down that list.
Posted by: lurp at August 30, 2005 03:15 AM