Google Talk is the name of both Google’s instant-messaging network and its IM client. You can download the Google Talk client and learn more about the Google Talk network at talk.google.com.
Note
To use Google Talk or Gmail Chat, you must have a Gmail username and password. Learn more about signing up for Gmail in Chapter 14, “Sending and Receiving Email with Gmail.”
As with competing IM systems, Google Talk lets you send and receive both text-based instant messages and voice-over-IP Internet phone calls. To use Google Talk as a text-based IM client, all you need is your computer and an Internet connection; to use Google Talk for Internet phone calls, you also need a microphone and a speaker for your PC.
Google Talk displays your contacts in its main window, as you can see in Figure 15.1. Those who are online and available to talk are displayed first, with a green ball next to their names. Offline contacts are displayed underneath.
To start a chat with one of your contacts, just click that person’s name. This opens a new chat window, like the one shown in Figure 15.2. Enter a message in the bottom text box, and then press Enter. Your ongoing discussion is displayed in the main window.
To invite new users to talk, just enter their email address or username into the search box at the top of the Google Talk window. If your friend already has a Gmail account, he’ll get an invitation to talk. If he doesn’t, you’ll be prompted to send a Gmail invitation in addition to the Google Talk invitation.
As for chatting with other Gmail or Google Talk users, all your Gmail contacts are preloaded into Google Talk, with the most frequently emailed contacts first. Contacts who already have Google Talk have a colored ball next to their names. A gray ball means they’re offline, a red ball means they’re busy, an orange ball means they’re idle (away from the keyboard), and a green ball means they’re online and available to chat.
Every now and then you run into some jerk online you really don’t want to talk to again. Fortunately, Google Talk lets you block incoming messages from selected users. All you have to do is open a new chat window for that person, click the down arrow in that window, and select Block Contact.
To unblock a previously blocked user, enter his or her email address into the Search, Add, or Invite box. The blocked user’s name should appear in the resulting list; click the name to open a talk tab, and then click the down arrow on the tab and select Unblock.
If the person you’re chatting with also has the Google Talk client installed, you can send files back and forth between yourselves. All you have to do is click the down arrow button in the chat window and select Send Files. Select one or more files on your hard drive, and then send them to your chat buddy. The file is received in the Google Talk window; your chat buddy has the option of accepting or declining the file. If he accepts, he can then open or download the file to his computer.
By default, Google Talk saves copies of all your chats. Some users like this ability to revisit a chat history, just in case something important got discussed that you’d like to refer to again.
Each complete chat session is saved as a message in your Gmail account. When you click the Chats link on the Gmail inbox page, you see a list of all your chats, as shown in Figure 15.3. Click a chat to read the history, or delete the chats you don’t really want to keep.
At any point in a chat session, you can go “off the record” and halt the history recording. All you have to do is click the down arrow in that chat window and select Go Off the Record. To resume recording the chat history, click the down arrow again and select Stop Chatting Off the Record. (By the way, as soon as you go off the record with a given user, all your subsequent chats—for this and other users—are off the record until you choose to go on the record again.)
To change your online status, click the Available list under your name in the main Google Talk window. You can choose to sign out, display your status as busy (with a standard message or a custom message), or display your status as available (again, with a standard message or a custom message). You can even opt to show the current music track you’re listening to, whether you’re available or not. To sign out, select Sign Out.
Google Talk also lets you conduct voice-based chat sessions with your fellow users. These Internet phone sessions are possible only if both computers are equipped with a microphone and speaker (or, alternatively, a telephone headset).
To initiate a voice chat, open a chat window for the person you want to talk to, and click the Call button. You’ll then be connected.
One of the most unique features of Google Talk is that you don’t need the Google Talk client to instant-message other users. If you use Google’s iGoogle personalized home page, you can add a Google Talk gadget to chat directly from that page.
As you can see in Figure 15.4, the Google Talk gadget looks and works just like the freestanding Google Talk client. If you want to move from iGoogle talk to the normal Google Talk window, just click the Pop Out button.
Here’s another unique feature of Google Talk. You can talk to your Google Talk contacts directly from your Gmail page in your web browser.
To start a chat with one of your Gmail contacts, hover over that person’s name in the Chat list on your Gmail page. This opens a pop-up window, as shown in Figure 15.5; click the Chat button to initiate the chat.
At this point a message window appears in the lower-right corner of your web browser, as shown in Figure 15.6. If you prefer to view the chat in a separate window, click Pop-out. In either case, you enter your messages in the bottom text box and then press Enter; the full chat is shown in the space above.
And, of course, you can go off the record or block a user the same way you do with the Google Talk client, just by clicking the Options menu.