This has to be my all time favorite Gmail release yet. You open your gmail in the morning to check your mail. Read your messages, and notice an email message you want to comment on instantly. Look at the left-side panel under Quick Contacts. This houses all of your Gmail contacts, pre-populated. You instantly know who's online via the green dot. (This is the same in the Google Talk standalone.) Click on a name, and a box opens up in the lower right corner of your browser. Very similar to the Google Talk application. Start typing away. If you want to pull the chat window out of the browser window, click "Pop-out" and your message window opens in another browser window, so you can minimize your browser window, and work on other items while chatting away. Now, just when you thought that was cool... Say that you want to talk privately about how many Google stocks you are going to buy up with your buddy through the chat, Click on the "Options" box in the message window. "Go Off The Record". Your chat transcripts are all stored in your Chats tab in the navigation, but the Off the Record parts are not. Chat transcripts are another great feature here. And again, totally searchable in great Google fashion.
In recap: Google Chat is a winner. And a great time saver. Never forget anything your buddy chatted to you about. Only thing you have to remember is to open your Gmail browser window every once and a while to check and see if anyone is messaging you.
1. I want my Quick Contacts! Still hanging around waiting for them to magically appear in my gmail. I've got the Chats option for browsing saved chats, just no quick contacts yet.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this all works, and if it becomes super popular (highly likely) and finally if they'll release some sort of plugin so that you can do voice chatting through your browser. Now that will be cool!
Posted at 4:32AM on Feb 9th 2006 by mccdyl001