Categories
general

Talk Google Talk

Google Talk Voice & IM Software

Google’s latest beta service, Google Talk is the talk of the town. A quick search on Google News returns several hundred items published in the past 24 hours about Google’s new instant messaging (IM) and voice chat service.

But once you get passed the hype and the media frenzy many reviewers are finding Google Talk underwhelming compared to feature rich veteran IM services like AIM and ichat or stable, established free voice chat services like Skype which is used by millions. In response to Google’s move into their territory, Skype has opened its software to encourage developers to incorporate Skype into their own products and services.

Skype Voice & IM Software

The new Google Talk service is tied in with Google’s free web mail service G-mail which until this week available only to users who were invited by other users. G-Mail made headlines for its unprecedented free 2 GB of space, its use of the Google search technology to make it easier to find your e-mails. Because G-mail places ads in your messages related to the content of your e-mail, it has stirred concerns among privacy advocates.

To get a free G-Mail account users are required to “pay” Google by providing the information aggregator with a mobile phone number where Google will subsequently send an unlock code by text message.

While Google promises not to be Evil, many journalists, privacy advocates, and savvy web users are beginning to wonder how much information is too much information for the data aggregator.

Categories
general

Internet Advertiser Wake Up Day

In an effort to stop forced user registration at major sites like The New York Times The Baltimore Sun and The Mercury News one site is urging users to sign the Internet Advertiser Wakeup Day Petition.

According to the site the petition was created by Tim Berners Lee who created the first website ever and is credited as the inventor of the world wide web.

Ironically, users have to provide their names and e-mail addresses to sign the petition so it makes me wonder if the petition is legit.

Categories
general

Watch TV on Google

Tired of downloading Six Feet Under episodes using Bit Torent? Well soon you might be able to find shows and even watch them via Google.

Google video search is nothing new but now Google is teaming up with TV producers including Al Gore’s upstart cable network Current to offer access to videos through Google.

Yet again the former Vice President’s vision and technological forsight is evident just as when he was given the huge task of ensuring that the age of netowrked media was not hindered by government by his boss back in the early 1990s (Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet).

Now I just wonder how long this Google service will be in beta.

via What’s Next Blog