More About Google+ Hangouts

Google's Justin Uberti has more information about Hangouts, the video conferencing app that will be available in Google+.

To support Hangouts, we built an all-new standards-based cloud video conferencing platform. This platform combines high quality, low latency, and strong security with the ease of use of a web application. Through the efficiency of this new platform, we're able to deliver a leading video conferencing experience at Google scale.

A few noteworthy technical points:
* Fully browser-based/cloud-based
* Client-server: leverages the power of Google's infrastructure
* Designed for low latency (< 100 ms) and high performance (multicore + hardware acceleration)
* Standards-based: XMPP, Jingle, RTP, ICE, STUN, SRTP
* Fully encrypted (HTTPS + SRTP)

Hangouts require the same plugin that's currently used for voice and video chat, it's limited to 10 participants and doesn't work on mobile devices yet. Another interesting thing is that "hangouts are created by one person, but everyone in the hangout shares the ability to invite others. Each hangout has a specific URL. That URL can be shared as a link to invite others." You can also use Hangout to watch a YouTube video with your friends.

Hangout looks like a great Google Talk feature and I don't see why it shouldn't be added to Gmail and to Google Apps. Video conferencing could make Google Apps a lot more useful.

Google Talk and AIM to Become Interoperable

When you log in to your AIM account in Gmail, you get a message from AOL that links to this page.

In the next few days, Google and AOL are working together to change the way you connect to AIM buddies within Gmail. After this change, Gmail and AIM users can talk directly to each other without having to log into both services (you will no longer be able to log into AIM within Gmail's "Chat" section).

It's nice to know that AIM and Gmail Chat (Google Talk) will finally become interoperable and the Gmail integration will no longer be necessary. Back in 2005, Google and AOL announced that "Google Talk users and AIM users will be able to communicate with one another" and two years later Gmail Chat integrated with AIM, but they didn't become interoperable.

{ Thanks, Josh. }

Ability to configure Chat settings at the organizational level

For domains that have the new interface for the Settings section in the Google Apps administrator control panel, it’s now possible to configure Chat settings at the organizational level.

This new interface should be out to all domains using the next generation control panel by the end of next week.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
US English only (Next Generation Control Panel)

How to access what's new:
In the administrator control panel, select ‘Settings’ and then ‘Chat’ to view the new option to configure chat settings at the ‘Org Settings’ level. This means that each organization that you’ve created can have different settings applied just to that organization.

Note: This option is only for domains that have the new ‘Settings’ interface that is currently being rolled out.

For more information:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=60767

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Google Talk Guru

Google Talk Guru is a new Google bot that lets you ask simple questions. It's "an experimental service that allows people to get information like sports results, weather forecasts, definitions etc via chat. It works on many popular chat applications that support Google Talk."

Send an invitation to guru@googlelabs.com in Gmail Chat, Google Talk or any other Jabber client and find simple facts like "weather in London", "amplitude definition", "translate souris", "2^8", "web stanford" (which returns the top Google result for [stanford]).


The service is not as powerful as Google SMS, but it's still handy.

{ Thanks, Michael. }

Gmail Voice and Video Chat for Linux

After two years of waiting, Gmail's plug-in for voice and video chat is finally available for Linux users. "Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon," says Tristan Schmelcher, from Google.


Justin Uberti says that adding Linux support was really difficult. "This release required significant engineering to develop an all-new video rendering solution and an all-new PulseAudio-based audio handler, along with work to support 64-bit and countless webcam compatibility tests. We spent a lot of effort to make it fully feature-complete, with all the same goodies as the Windows and Mac versions, and we're happy to now support Google voice and video now on all major desktop platforms."

Now that video chat is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, when will it be ported to Android?

Friend Suggestions in Google Chat

The Google Chat gadget from iGoogle's sidebar started to show friend suggestions and they're usually people you've emailed frequently. Google also shows a list of Google Translate bots that help you translate the messages from a conversation.



Another new feature lets you send some of your contacts to someone you've emailed frequently.


It seems that the suggestions are displayed even if you've enabled this option in Gmail: "Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online". By default, Gmail automatically invites to Google Chat the users whom you frequently email. "Gmail determines which contacts you'll be able to talk to without having to invite each other."

{ Thanks, Bogdan. }