Digitaltopia

As part of Google's well laid plans for world domination the company has rolled out its newest program called Goolge Talk. The program looks to combine three of the Internet's hottest commodities. Instant Messaging, VOIP, and the Google trademark. Google will be taking on America Online, Microsoft, and Yahoo with its entry into the Instant Messaging market. It will also be challenging upstart Skype who is the current front running in the VOIP market. Google talk merges IM'ing and Internet phone calls nearly flawlessly.

Digitaltopia tested the program for nearly an hour this morning. The download and install are both quick and easy. At this point you need to have an existing Gmail account to be able to use the program. Invites to Gmail have became quite easy to come across of late however. If anyone of my readers are in need of a Gmail invite they can contact me via Digitaltopia[at]mchsi.com. The interface is great, and the program is nice and light with your system resources. At this point its totally free of advertising however don't be surprised if you see those Google text ads integrated into future versions. The program does a good just of letting you see new IM's even if you have the program minimized and are busy doing something else. It also manages to do this in a way that is not overly annoying.

Google Talk's IM is based on the open source Jibber protocol. This allows the client to be much more open to 3rd party IM clients. This is a stark change compared to current clients. They tend to not like the 3rd party clients like Trillian or Miranda. It would be even better if Google had included feature that allow users to add contacts from other popular IM services like MSN, or AIM. The Google Talk homepage can be found here.

All around Digitaltopia has to give Google Talk two big thumbs up. It flawlessly integrates Gmail into the program, has a top notch interface, and accomplishes this all in its first public version.