greenthinks

(or why Google Talk is really not ready for primetime)

Many people were disappointed with Google Talk. There was an expectation that Google was going to redefine this sector of the internet as they have done with so many others. Alas, it was not meant to be. Although, if they’re master plan calls for the other three major IM players to break down their walls and allows IM to enter the real mainstream by enabling users to converse with anyone across the networks, then perhaps this was the plan all along. After all if they had just wiped the floor with Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, the chances of those big 3 sitting down at the bargaining table might be much less than it is right now.

But that was not really my point in any case. I tried to like Google Talk, I really did. I read Steve Gillmor’s nicely surrealistic post about how it made his PC feel like a Mac, but it just did not work for me.

Then this happened. I tried sending a link from Adium:

and this is what showed up on Google Talk:

So, this nice simple Google IM app cannot understand a link tag? If I cannot even send a link to a GTalk user, it really is quite useless.

Update: Yes, Google Talk can indeed display URL’s as links, as you can see here:

However, that simply is not good enough when every modern IM client makes it super easy for even the novice to send a link as a link to someone. ahref is NOT that complicated and the fact that the Google guys left it out leads me to believe that they are not really using this (or at least not the public version of the tool) for work, as was claimed.

My latest Flickr friend is a Jordanian mac-using artist. I find it really incredible how the internet has allowed us to cross previously uncrossable boundaries. I have become friends on Skype with a girl my age from Birmingham, UK who is a Muslim from Qatar. She had never known a Jew and I had never known a Muslim all that well. We talk about our respective religions, about our lives, and about the incredible misconceptions our respective worlds have about the other.

The thing I have learned most from these interactions is that when the distractions of labels, skin color, ethnicity, and nationality are removed – something the web does an excellent job of – there is so much more connecting us all than there is dividing us.

Turns out he’s really good at it.

Remember how you couldn’t send emails to your friends who used Eudora, because you were using Pine? That’s because it never happened. That shortcoming would never fly, yet we put up with these exact bugaboos on a regular basis. I’m getting real close to dropping all IM activity altogether until the brands get their acts together. That’s likely to never happen, because we have huge egos at stake.

Chris Pirillo, responding to the release of Google Talk – yet another distinct IM universe (albeit this one is open)

OK, I lied. I am still reading Dave Winer’s blog every so often. Today he is having problems hitting the wrong modifier keys on his mac, as the layout is different from that on PC’s.

Tiger to the rescue:

For the uninitiated amongst you, that’s System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse/Keyboard/Modifier Keys button at the bottom.

I’m liking Dave Winer less and less these days. I still really enjoy his offbeat manner and his aging hippy approach, and still subscribe to his podcast via iTunes, but I unsubscribed from his blog about a month ago when he started talking about nothing but his new OPML Editor. I downloaded an the first public release for Windows and I knew within seconds that I did not care. The interface was not only ugly, but very Windows 3.1-like and it was clear that his talents lie in areas other than user interaction design (like probably programming). I had been reading his blog for his views on web issues and on politics, and also because I found some great content through his links, but as the posts started to be mere inane updates on his own software and how it was better than anything else out there, I just had had enough.

Today I was forward back to him via one of the other blogs I read, and it seems he was talking about something dear to my heart, the Mac. Dave bought a Mac to work on the Mac version of his Editor, which he had been saying he would not do, but whatever. He really did not like it and hates Safari. He then proceeded to bash Apple and praise Microsoft:

I just spent a few minutes playing with the Mac. Our OPML Editor needs a bunch of work, I can see that right away. I really dislike Safari, I so don’t care for their choice of sites to feature and the feeds they chose are all the predictable ones. Where’s the Home icon. I would love to be surprised and see some blogs in their default choices, geez, I mean they did get all this free IP from us, but they’re so into big companies. I really really dislike Apple. Sorry if you love them—I don’t. Steve Jobs has a lot of nerve telling Dean that they’re copying them, when they’re doing such a poor job of copying us. Maybe I’ll come around, but I kind of doubt it. Do they have a version of IE for this thing? I’d much rather use that than Apple’s browser.

If the Googleplexniks are serious about that phrase “the world’s information,” they need to look beyond the realm of Windows. The world doesn’t stop where the “Start” menu ends.

from Scott Rosenberg