Google Talk is Down

In case you're messing around with your network equipment and checking and rechecking your computer and app settings because your Google Talk is not working... STOP. It's not your problem. The Google Talk service is down and there's still no word on when it's expected to be fixed.

Whenever a Google Service stops working for you, you should check the Google services status page to see if there's something wrong.

Until the "green light" shows up on Google Talk, there's no "talking" to anyone... at least not via Google Talk. (As you can imagine, Twitter and Facebook are bound to become a fertile ground for people complaining about it - and vice-versa. :)

Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Talk lose Beta status

An historic day indeed... After years of service (and lots of critics regarding the ever present beta status on its services) Google is about to remove its beta tag from Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar.

For the most part, you shouldn't notice any difference, so... just keep on using it as you've always done before.

Google Talk Helpful Virtual Friends

Digital Inspiration teaches you how to turn Google Talk into a helpful learning tool with a set of automated bots.
These "bots" act just like real people you can add to your friends list and are available 27/7 to help you whenever you need:


1. imfeeds@gmail.com - Add this IM Feeds bot as your Google Talk buddy and you’ll be able to read any blog or website that syndicates content via RSS feeds.
To subscribe to a website in GTalk, simply send a new IM message that says "sub abc.com" where abc.com is the address of the website / blog you want to read inside Google Talk.

2. friendfeed@imified.com - This secret bot lets you post to FriendFeed from Google Talk. You may submit either hyperlinks or text messages.

3. imified@imified.com - This imified bot turns Google Talk into a real powerhouse.
You can post bookmarks to delicious, send messages to Twitter, submit blog entries to WordPress, Tumblr or Blogger, manage events in Google Calendar, shorten long URLs, run whois and so on.

4. inezhabot@gmail.com - Like IM Feeds, iNezha bot helps you read feeds inside Google Talk but this is slightly more versatile. For instance, you can simply say "digg" and it will show a list of all feeds that match that search term so you don’t have to type (or copy-paste) feed addresses.

5. Translation - This is a free service from Google that helps you translate words from a foreign language into your native language. Just add the relevant bot (e.g. hi2en@bot.talk.google.com for Hindi to English or en2hi@bot.talk.google.com for English to Hindi) as your buddy, send him a message and it will get translated instantly.

6. Set Task Reminders - If you need to remember something important, Google Talk can send you reminders for that event.
Just add timer to your Twitter friend’s list and then add twitter@twitter.com to your buddy list in Gtalk. Now if you want to get a reminder after 50 minutes, send a direct message to twitter  like "d timer 50 pick kids from school" and a reminder will automatically pop up in your Google Talk after 50 minutes.

7. Transliteration - If you want to chat in your mother tongue (like Hindi or Tamil) but feel more comfortable using the English keyboard, Google Transliteration bot will come in handy.
For instance, add en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com to you friend’s list in GTalk and all messages you type in English will get transliterated in the language of your choice.  Available only for a few Indian languages.