Google Talk

(23:13:21) gmail.com: The broken link has been fixed. Thanks for being our first users!

Let the talk begin! I used these instructions for Gaim to get online last night after Russ popped on and let me know that all the cool kids were using Google Talk.

Per usual the official client is Windows only, but since they’ve done the smart thing and used XMPP (Jabber), you can point just about any client at it and away you go. The setup (at least in Gaim) is a bit non-standard, but it works.

I really want to sniff some packets on a windows box to see how they’re integrating the VOIP stuff over XMPP. Hopefully they’ve done the right thing again and are using SIP.

Update: At this time it looks like Google does not provider any server to server connections and (to my knowledge) no gateways to the outside world. Please stay within the walled garden, and don’t stand on the grass. This seems to contradict a lot of the “user choice” and “open communication” bits scattered throughout the rest of the page.

Their developer FAQ is interesting though. They’re using custom XMPP signalling to a soon-to-be-documented peer-to-peer chat protocol that just happens to work with iChat. They support a bunch of protocols too and are thinking about speex too.

It looks like their first connections with the outside world will be federations with Sipphones Gizmo project and EarthLink’s Vling services. There’s no GoogleOut or GoogleIn at this time.

You can find me at first initial last name (all one word) at gmail dot com.