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If you use Google Apps at your business, organization or school, you can now use the Google Talk Gadget on your Start Page to have chats with colleagues or classmates (including group chats). Google Apps lets your organization create Gmail accounts that use your domain name -- like me@my-organization.com -- instead of @gmail.com in the email address. It also offers collaborative tools, like Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and the customizable Start Page, where all your students, employees, or members can view relevant content, preview their inboxes and calendars, and now, chat with one or more colleagues or classmates -- all from the same webpage.

As a Google Apps user, you can add the Google Talk Gadget to your Start Page by clicking on the "Add stuff" link on the top left corner of your homepage, opening the 'Google Apps' category of gadgets, and clicking 'add it now.' If you're a Google Apps administrator, click here to learn how to add the Google Talk Gadget and other content to your users' Start Page. If your organization doesn't use Google Apps yet, you can learn more about getting started at http://www.google.com/a.

Adam Fass
Software Engineer

I gave a presentation about the Google Talk Service a while ago at the Google Scalability Conference hosted by Googlers in Seattle. You can watch the video below.

Here is the abstract:
Since launching Google Talk in the summer of 2005, we have integrated the service with two large existing products: Gmail and orkut. Each of these integrations provided unique scalability challenges as we had to handle a sudden large increase in the number of users. Today, Google Talk supports millions of users and handles billions of packets per day. In the presentation, I discuss several practical lessons and key insights from our experience that can be used for any project. These lessons cover both engineering and operational areas.



Posted by Reza Behforooz, Software Engineer

Today, we added support for 20 more languages to the web-based Google Talk Gadget. The new languages are: Chinese(Simplified), Chinese(Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English(UK), Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese(Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

To access the Google Talk Gadget in your language, go to the Google Talk homepage, select your language in the drop-down menu in the top right, and click on the 'launch Google Talk Gadget' link. Or you can simply add the Google Talk gadget to your iGoogle home page.

As usual, we would love to hear your feedback. Anything we can do to improve the experience for your language? Let us know.

Katya Rogers
Software Engineer

Finding a good Google Talk picture can be a real chore. It's hard enough to find a photo of yourself where you're smiling and looking intelligent, without all the additional hassle of cropping, exporting, and manually uploading your picture. So I devoted a few cycles to solving this problem in a fun way. Today, we're launching a way for you to take your Google Talk picture directly from your webcam.

From the Google Talk gadget, click on your Google Talk picture, and select the "Take Photo" option. You'll see the image from your webcam appear, and you'll be able to take and retake pix to your heart's content. When you get that perfect shot, just click "Save" to set it as your picture.

Currently, this feature only works in the Google Talk gadget, but will set your picture across the Google Talk network, including in Gmail.

Have fun, and let us know what you think here.

Justin Uberti
Software Engineer

OK, I cheated. I don't really speak Chinese. But I know a bot that does, and we're releasing it today together with number of other translation bots. For those not familiar with bots, a (ro)bot is a piece of software that acts as a chat contact and provides some fun or useful functionality.

If you want to try it, just add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry.



For more languages, just add any of the 29 23 other translation bots. They're named using two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

For those of you into programming, why not build your own bot? Maybe a weather service or a rock/paper/scissors game. The Google Talk service uses an open protocol called XMPP, and it's easy to find client libraries and code samples that will give you a flying start. For Java users, check out Ignite Realtime's Smack library. Please note that the Google Talk service enforces traffic limitations on user accounts, so if you want to support more than a few thousand Google Talk users on your bot, connect using the server-to-server protocol (either by making your bot act as an XMPP server or by hosting the bot on your own XMPP server).

Jonas Lindberg
Software Engineer

Update: Our initial list of available bots included some languages that are not actually available. There are 24 bots currently available: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. As some have guessed, this is a 20% project, and while machine translation isn't perfect, we hope these bots can be helpful in bridging language barriers.

It goes without saying that instant messaging has become integral to communicating in the workplace and at school. Chat helps us to share ideas instantaneously with co-workers and classmates. That's why Google Talk has always been a part of Google Apps, our package of applications built for collaborating within organizations. We're happy to announce today that we've made it even easier for you and your co-workers or classmates to start using Google Apps and Google Talk. It's called Google Apps Team Edition, and if you have an email address from your employer or school, you can sign up right now.

With Google Apps Team Edition, you and members of your organization get Google Docs, for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and Google Calendar, for coordinating your schedule. When you use Google Talk with Google Apps Team Edition, your contacts list will automatically include the other people at your organization using Google Apps Team Edition. And since Team Edition recognizes your connection to co-workers or classmates, it makes sharing documents and calendars easier too. Give it a try by visiting www.google.com/apps.



Bill Kee
Associate Product Marketing Manager

Do you have a blog, online profile, or some other personal web page? Would you like to communicate more with your visitors? Today we're launching a new Google Talk feature that lets visitors to your web site chat with you. We call it "chatback" because instead of you doing all the talking on your blog, your visitors can talk back to you. Sure, they could leave comments, but those are public and hard to use for a real conversation. With chatback, it's a real instant message session.

To use chatback, you must have a Google Talk account ... but your visitors don't have to! They don't even need to have an email address, or to have ever used instant messaging.

When they visit your site, they'll see a badge like the one on the right showing your online status (available, busy, offline) and, if you're available, they can just click and start chatting. Chatback uses the web-based Google Talk Gadget so your visitors don't need to download anything. It opens in a new window so they can keep chatting with you even if they browse to other pages.

Of course, chatback isn't just for blogs. You can use it on any web page that you can add HTML content to. To get started, visit the chatback start page. (This is also linked from the Google Talk homepage.) Then just copy the provided HTML snippet to your web site. Visitors will then see a badge on your site indicating your availability, and can click to start a chat with you. If there's a time when you don't want to be distracted, just set your online status to "busy" and visitors won't be able to chat with you until you change your status back to "available."

If you're not already a Google Talk user, it's easy to become one. If you've got a Gmail account, then you already have a Google Talk account. If not, just go to www.google.com/talk or www.gmail.com to get started.

Bruce Leban
Software Engineer