Jul 04

Google Talk For iPhone

Instant messaging is something that, if not created, people would have found a way to make it happen. For example, more than a decade ago, some of my friends were crazy about using their mobile phones to send and receive text messages. They got so good (that means "fast," obviously) at it, that I can almost call "instant messaging" what they were doing. Well, that's for the past, but now, we have real instant messaging on our phones already, as long as the devices are smart enough, of course! As you know already, this is all taking us to the Apple iPhone...

One of the problems of the iPhone, just as it happens with most new products in the smartphone market that use a completely new mobile OS, was the lack of applications for it. I say "was," because this problem is slowly, but surely, fading away. Obviously, the App Store will have a big contribution to that, but until then, there are plenty of software producers working on iPhone applications and releasing them into the wild, and today, the time has come to talk about Google and its Google Talk instant messaging application.

So...what about Google Talk? First, a few general facts - until now, GTalk was known as a Windows and Web-based application for voice over internet, first beta version being released on the 24th of August, 2005. Since then, some time has passed, and with the release of the Google Talk gadget, all platforms able to run Adobe Flash applications also got the power of using GTalk. Does this ring any bells?

The story is short and simple - Google has just announced a new version of Google Talk, which is now designed to work with the iPhone and iPod touch. Basically, there is no major change, but the layout has been formatted to match the look & feel of other iPhone applications. This isn't something new to Google, since Gmail and Reader are already available as iPhone applications.

Unfortunately, there are two issues with the iPhone GTalk - because it must be opened though Safari, owners of old iPhones won't be able to chat and take phone calls at the same time, while the second problem is that, when the browser window in which GTalk is running is left behind and the user is switching to another application, or even another browser window, the status in the instant messaging application is automatically changed to "unavailable."

That's it for now, so...if you want to get Google Talk for iPhone, you know the issues, you know where to take it from, and I suppose you already knew that GTalk is free to download and use, so...good luck messaging with it!