As you are probably already aware, Google released its new Instant Messaging Tool called Google Talk.

From http://www.google.com/talk/

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world..

If you want to try it out, you will need a Google email account first (called “Gmail”). You can get one here: mail.google.com

I downloaded Google Talk to my desktop. At first it did not load correctly, but it worked fine after I disabled Norton Internet Security in order to start the program. The instant messaging tool currently has minimal features at the moment but they say the will be adding more features over time (for example, no streaming video or file swapping).

What I am most interested in trying out is their VOIP (also known as Voice Over Ip, or Voice over Internet) feature. With this you can talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room (you must have a computer microphone and speakers). What’s cool about this is that I think long distance calls in the U.S. are free (I gotta double check this). Of course it does not come with all the fancy stuff like Vonage (wu who wu who who, wu who wu who who) does (the Vonage commercial tune is great).

Most of your questions about how it works can be found here:
http://www.google.com/talk/start.html or
http://www.google.com/support/talk/

Try it out!

Posted by Schroeder on Friday, August 26th, 2005 at 2:49 pm.