Google is making its Google Talk instant-messaging application available for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.

One of Google's software engineers posted the news in a blog on Wednesday.

"In addition to sending your friends Gmail messages from your iPhone, you can now chat with them while you're on the move, too!" Adam Connors, of Google's mobile team said in the blog.

The application doesn't require any software to be installed or downloaded. Instead it works within the phone's browser, so users can simply go to the site www.google.com/talk, sign in, and start chatting.

Read more: webware.com 

Labels: instant messaging, iPhone, iPod, Talk

“Reader and Talk are Friends!”

That’s how Google announced earlier this month on one of its corporate blogs the expansion of the sharing features in Google Reader, the company’s service for viewing blogs. The feature didn’t win Google a lot of friends.

Several bloggers and users have sounded the alarm about this, with some justification.

Here’s what the brouhaha is about. For some time now, Google has allowed you to share with your friends blog posts you view using Reader. You got to select the items you wanted shared and you got to choose your friends. When you marked a new item as shared, your friends who use Reader would see it. (Technically, your shared items were on a public Web page, so they could have been seen by others who are not your friends, if those people could figure out how to find that page.)

Full story: nytimes.com 

Labels: reader, Talk

In Google's never-ending quest to collect and utilize the world's information, the company today introduced a new translation feature to its Google Talk chat client. Delivered as a series of chat bots, these tools can quickly translate a phrase or paragraph for you, and they can even be added to group chats to act as real-time translators. The inaugural attempt is certainly a big step in the right direction, but as with any attempt to bridge language barriers with automation, things sometimes get lost in translation.

Google lists out about 30 total language bots in the announcement post on the Google Talk blog. The bots are all logically named according to their translation duty, such as en2ko@bot.talk.google.com, signifying an English to Korean translation. Just like Google's other language services, English is the dominant language across the translations, though some non-English bots such as fr2de do exist. Users must add a bot to their Gmail contact list in order to communicate with the bot or use it in a group chat. Once added though, these bots will do their job both in Gmail and other Google Talk implementations like the iGoogle start page, but group chats don't appear to work in third-party clients such as Apple's iChat.

Full article: arstechnica.com 

Labels: iGoogle, instant messaging, Talk, translate

They say talk is cheap. With Google Talk, it’s free–and fast:

· Flexibility: Get in touch with an IM, email, or a call

· Quality: Enjoy fast file transfer and high quality voice calls

· Convenience: Convenience: Reach all your Gmail contacts, with just a click

· Pictures and themes: See pictures in your Friends list and chat sessions.

· File Transfer: With this top requested new feature, you can send unlimited files and folders to your friends through Google Talk. There is no restriction on the file type or size and the peer-to-peer transfer is fast and reliable.

· Voicemail: If your friends aren’t around to answer your call, you can leave them a voicemail message instead. Just record your voice after the “Meep” and your friends will get an email to their Talk contact address with the voicemail attached as an audio file. They can play your message when they check their email and save it for as long as they want.

· Music Status and Music Trends: Listening to music while chatting on Google Talk? Now you can let your friends see what you’re listening to by selecting “Show current music track” in your status menu. Your status message will change when your song does!

· Chat with your orkut friends using Google Talk

· PC-to-PC voice calls

Google Talk requires a Gmail username and password, and Windows 200/XP/Vista.

Mac and Linux users can connect to Google Talk using other other IM clients.

Download: Google Talk 1.0.0.105 | Google Talk for BlackBerry devices (most commonly accessed via your BlackBerry) 

Labels: AIM, AOL, Gmail, instant messaging, Talk