Google Talk Connects to Jabber Network
I’m sure most of my readers already know this, but just in case: It took a little while, but Google Talk now talks to other public Jabber servers. That means that if you have a Google Talk account you should be able to send IMs to julian@jabber.org to talk to me. Very nice.
The next steps from my point of view would be supporting offline messages and figuring out a common voice chat protocol so that we have all the various clients speaking the same tongue.
Hopefully this will add a little bit of the kind of oomph Jabber needs (very good article, by the way).
Where have you been? Did you miss all the noise over Jingle last month?
As Nolan pointed out, yeah…
Google Talk VoIP = Jingle = JEPs 166 and 167. :)
There’s a difference between rolling your own solution and telling everyone else to use it, and just going with what other people are already using.
Yes, Nolan, I know about Jingle. That’s not a solution, that’s a proposed solution. Last I checked iChat and Trillian weren’t using it. It’s very nice that it’s a JEP and everything, but it changes the general direction people were going with voice and video chat yet again. At least they’re written up as JEPs this time, but that doesn’t always mean much of anything anyway.
*hides jingle.cpp* Noooo, you’re right, Trillian isn’t using it in the current build… O:)
Yes, Sparks, I know you’d support it as soon as possible, but that still doesn’t make it the standard that everyone is using. It could happen, yes, but it’s rare that Jabber actually settles down on one standard in a reasonable amount of time.
What if Microsoft suddenly connects to Jabber and creates yet another standard? Sparks will go and support that one too, but that doesn’t make it the one true standard.
I still can’t voicechat with Google Talk users using my client(s) of choice, and however much Jabber wants to pretend there’s one true voicechat standard, there is not. That is a problem that needs fixed, and that is why I mentioned it. Not because I hadn’t heard of Jingle, as Nolan implied.
Well, keep in mind that Psi-Jingle exists and works and will go into the main tree, with any luck, the first half of this year. GAIM is also supporting it through Jabber. There’s big talk of Asterisk server adding Jabber and Jingle support. I think that everyone is tired of waiting. Google Talk has been tested and it works, and the community is happy to use it.
I think that Asterisk will be a major stepping stone as well being as it will open up Jingle connectivity to all of the major VoIP standards.
I think you’re underestimating the momentum behind Jingle.
Well, in terms of everyone backing the standard, did you see the press release where just about every party active in the xmpp community announced their backing for the protocol?
I don’t think one could argue anything else; jingle is here and it’s the standard.
Ok, well, if Jingle it is, then Jingle it is. I certainly won’t complain if Jabber actually has one standard that everyone supports for once.
Similar things were said about H.323 and eventually the SIP initiation stuff iChat used when each of those were popular. The difference here is that Google actually documented this stuff and provided a library, but that doesn’t rule out bigger companies doing the same in the future.
[…] The best bet for people looking for a public Jabber account is to sign up for a Google Talk account. Even though Google Talk does not support offline messaging, it does connect to other Jabber servers, meaning you can still send me messages from Google Talk’s servers. Don’t miss Google’s page explaining how to set up iChat. […]