Gmail marries Talk, Skype still best man? |
Big GNews of the day is Google adding Talk functionality to Gmail. A curious move to marry a popular service of theirs with one that hasn’t reached critical mass. Maybe this will be the catalyst. I am currently reviewing this Gmail+Talk integration so my title is not the result of a review but a legitimate question for those who have tried this out already. I do not use Google Talk currently and my Gmail usage has fallen off dramatically, so this announcement doesn’t do much for me.
After some 2+ years, however, I do use Skype.
Skype added video capability with v2.0 in December and despite everybody taking shots at them, still sits atop the hill. As I write this, there are 5,101,553 users on Skype. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they still have a good following for VoIP integration and a secondary, but useful feature of chat. I wonder what eBay is going to do with them since nothing seems to be the answer currently?
And finally a brief rant on the number of IM clients: stop already. I only need one freaking IM client. We’re dying out here as users with all the IM options. Yes, I use one of the most useful mashups, Trillian, to combat the orgasIMc flow.
How do the rest of you keep up with all of these different IM clients? I think I’m going to need another few inches of business card space if somebody doesn’t stop the IM madness. Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Google, Skype just get in bed on this and have true interoperability between all of you. Wishful thinking? Probably.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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What is up with all the Google news? Is Google the center of the universe? Maybe I am just noticing this after our little dust up but are all you web developers scared to death of Google? Isn’t anybody else doing good or evil stuff in the web development world?
What do I know, I just draw pictures.
Comment by Paul Benjamin — February 8, 2006 @ 1:51 am PST
Hi Paul - Glad to see you are still with us. I envy people who can draw because I’m not very good at that. I have been trying to draw, although my goal of drawing at least one new picture every day of the new year died around January 6.
I just wrote a comment replying to your ccncerns above but it got wayyy too long to post here. So turned it into a post and then decided not to post yet because it was just more about Google which seemed to be exactly what you are complaing about above, lol, what a catch-22. Think I’ll sleep on this one and maybe post it in the morning. Or might send to you privately with your blessing. Or might just roundfile the thing and call it an exercise in 500+ words.
In the meantime, please go back through the archives because by my count anyway only 5 of the last 25 posts here had to do with Google specifically. Word count might have caught your eye as I did go into some longer Google-related posts but I’m sure you have already noticed that I don’t skimp by on word usage. Not a scientific study but I’d guess that’s a fairly normal ratio (20%) around here, but I didn’t go back any further than the last 25 posts to verify.
A current search indicates 491 of nearly 3,000 posts have the word Google used in them (roughly 16%).
You didn’t mention which IM client you preferred?
Comment by TDavid — February 8, 2006 @ 3:46 am PST
I guess it is more in my mind than yours. It is still odd that Google is in the news a lot lately. But then it isn’t every day that an advertising company stands up to the US government and caves into the Chinese government.
I don’t mean it to come off as a complaint. As we both know I am not the best writer and tend to go way too far. I guess I need to work on my tone. I would like to know how important you think Google is in your business and others that you follow.
Thanks,
Comment by Paul Benjamin — February 8, 2006 @ 8:07 am PST
I think the buzz over Google is not so much about what they’ve done so far, as it is about their potential to really change things. They’re the first to deliver big time on the concept of web-based service-oriented applications, and they have the potential to make that the platform and paradigm of choice. Each new service they announce lays another block in that foundation.
Regarding IM clients, I hate ‘em all. I’d rather read e-mail or blogs when I have time than be interrupted by an IM. However, some of my clients don’t feel that way, and they use Windows Messenger, thus so do I. I plan to give Gmail chat a good look, though, once it comes on-line.
Comment by Sterling Camden — February 8, 2006 @ 12:17 pm PST
[…] As I wrote a couple weeks ago, it’s a chat overdose and we might as well throw VoIP into the mix. I still use Skype the most for VoIP on the computer, Vonage off the computer and Trillian for IM. If any readers have/use any of the VoIP/chat options above please let me know what I’m missing from these other offerings. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » VoIP everywhere, including Firefox with OpenWengo extension — February 22, 2006 @ 9:20 am PST