This quick tutorial will show you how to develop your own functional IM bot that works with Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live and all other popular instant messaging clients.
To get started, all you need to know are some very basic programming skills (any language would do) and web space to host your 'bot'.
For this example, I have created a dummy bot called 'labnol' that listens to your IM messages and return related search phrases based on Google Suggest. To see this live, add labnol@bot.im to your GTalk buddy list and start chatting.
View the tutorial over at the Digital Inspiration blog
Attention iPhone owners! You can now chat with all your Google Talk buddies while on the go. Our new version of Google Talk is designed specifically for the iPhone and runs in the iPhone's browser, so you don't need to download or install anything. Just visit www.google.com/talk on your iPhone, sign in, and start chatting. And because it is built for the browser, it will work on today's iPhones as well as on tomorrow's 3G iPhones.
The success of the iPhone has meant many popular web services now have specific pages and functions designed for it, including the most popular web messengers.
Source: The Google Talk development blog View Google Talk for the iPhone
From the beginning, Google has been committed to open standards and interoperation for instant messaging. So when our friends at AOL agreed to let Gmail users talk to users on their network, we jumped at the chance.
Today we are happy to tell you about a new feature we've started to roll out which will enable you to sign into your AIM account and chat with your AIM buddies right inside Gmail. When you log in to AIM through Gmail chat, your AOL buddies will appear in your chat list with friends from your Google Talk network, and you will see the yellow 'running man' logo to the right of your AIM friends' screen names. To your AIM friends it will look like you are logged in to AIM as usual.
Google look committed to expanding this onto several IM networks and who knows, one day Google Talk could be used to talk to friends using several IM clients. The only thing stopping this from ever happening is from a business perspective. I just can't see Microsoft handing over its users potentially to use Google Talk.
Source: Official Gmail blog
on Mon 12 Nov 2007 (19:43 GMT) (4574 views)
Integration is similar to that of web messengers in the way you can sign into one IM network at a time, but sign in through the same client. Google already supports other IM clients as pointed out by Adam Dempsey.
Google Talk working with several clients is key to get more users. Most IM networks are old and have already built up their user base. Google still need to attract users and it is doubtful it can fulfill the IM market without allowing users to use the IM client of their choice.
If this gets rolled out to regular users, there will soon be two major IM camps: Yahoo-Microsoft and Google-AOL. It's funny how a $1 billion investment gets things moving along.
Source: Google Operating System BlogPidgin beta released
The long awaited Gaim 2.0 beta 7 (now known as Pidgin) has been released to the public. This is hopefully going to be the last public beta before the official release. It is the first we have seen of the newly re-named software. Click here to view the announcement, or click here to download Pidgin.
Video coming to Google Talk?
According to an article at PCWorld, 'Google Inc. has bought video conferencing software from Marratech AB', 'The client software runs on Windows 2000 or XP, Mac OS X 10.4, or versions of Linux'. Could this provide a cross-platform video conferencing boost to gTalk?
Read more on the subject here, here and here.
Windows Live Hotmail finally ready (for US and UK)?
LiveSide have reported about an email certain US testers recently received containing details of a few rewards for beta testers to thank them for testing Windows Live Hotmail. Could this finally mean Windows Live Hotmail is ready for release in the main worldwide markets? (PS from the andyman: UK users might want to keep an eye on this site)
The web messenger is very good. Fast, simple, does the job. It makes other web messenger's look like a joke e.g. MSN's web messenger (ouch, that is painfully hard to use). This step just makes using Google Talk easier, and with more people gaining a Google account, things only look brighter for Google. I think it's time Windows Live Messenger launched a new web messenger, learning from the simplicity and user friendliness Google often offers.
View Google Talk See our list of web messengers
Google Talk and AIM have a similar protocol, but Google wants a gateway in the servers, to make sure there are no issues getting screen names etc from AIM.
Quotation from Justin Uberti, who has worked with both Google and AIM:
On the Google side, I can simply refer to our official statement, and give our stock answer, "We are working actively on integrating AIM access in Google Talk."
[...]
AOL also appears to be working on an XMPP gateway for AIM, which would allow XMPP/Jabber clients to access the AIM network using AIM screen names. Based on the public information, it looks like this should be available in the near future.
Compatibility with other clients looks like the future for instant messengers. I wonder if one day, MSN and Windows Live Messenger will work with Google Talk, I personally would love to see that happen.
Source: Google Operating System blogon Fri 22 Dec 2006 (15:07 GMT) (2422 views)
It's all down to the protocols, and because I am not a wiz in this area, despite touching on the subject before, it's the only reason why it works. Google and AOL have also teamed up, and they use a different protocol to that of Yahoo! and Microsoft.
Michael Miller has explained how to get Google Talk to work with many different IM networks, going through each step in what is a rather large article. If you are interested I suggest following the link below and giving it a read.
Read 'Hacking Google Talk to Work with AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger'
Messenger Stuff