Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 24, 2010 by CyberNet.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m trying to use Google Voice more, and one thing that I’m shocked Google hasn’t done is tightly integrate SMS messages with the Google Talk instant messenger. That way if you’re online and someone sends you an SMS it will also flow through to your chat client so that it’s easier to respond.

Last week I decided to start searching around to see if anyone had found a way to do this… a way for me to receive my SMS messages as an IM to my Google Talk account, and then be able to turn around and respond to them as if it was a typical IM conversation. Turns out there is a web-based service called GVMax that works remarkably well in this regard.

As you can see in the screenshot above there are several different notification methods you can use including Google Talk, Prowl, email, Twitter, Howl, and more. For my purposes I’m only using it for Google Talk, and once I got it configured I was amazed with the results. You’ll notice that within seconds of receiving an SMS message you will receive the IM, and responding to it goes back through your Google Voice account as an SMS to the recipient. That’s right, this fully supports two-way (send and receive) conversations instead of just serving as a notifier. The person you’re chatting with will have no idea that you’re using Google Talk rather than your phone, and the history of your messages are still kept in Google Voice just as if you had sent them using a typical method.

There are some things to note though. For one all the messages you receive will appear as a new contact. If the number is in your Google Contacts they will show up as the name of the person followed by the label designated for a particular number. That might sound confusing, but it’s actually simple. The names of your contacts will look like “John Doe [mobile]” or “John Doe [home]” depending on the label you set to the phone number they sent the messages with.

After you set up the service it’s important to be aware that GVMax automatically creates a filter in your Gmail account so that the messages are forwarded on to a special GVMax email address that is specific to you. Make sure you don’t delete this filter, otherwise the service will stop working.

GVMax Homepage

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

The long-awaited Google Talk for iPhone is finally available, and it’s not in the form of an iPhone application. Instead, it’s simply a browser app which makes us wonder why it took Google over a year to make something for the iPhone. Perhaps they were too busy working on stuff for their own Android?

Anyway, Google Talk is available and was designed just for the iPhone. All iPhone users need to do is go to www.google.com/talk in safari, sign-in, and then they’ll be able to start chatting. Because we sold our iPhones on eBay so that we could upgrade to the iPhone 3G next week, we weren’t able to test this out first-hand, but from what others have said, it works exactly as it should. The one downside that we can see is that if you navigate away from the browser or open up a new window, your status is changed to “unavailable” and then when you return, your session will be restarted.

At first glance you may think that this doesn’t benefit you in any way because you don’t own an iPhone. Fortunately that isn’t the case, and there is actually a practical way that Opera and Firefox users can put this to good-use. Think Sidebar.

This new version of Google Talk for the iPhone fits really nicely in the sidebar of Firefox and Opera. Those of you who load sites in your sidebar already will know exactly what to do to get Google Talk up-and-running there. For those of you that don’t, you’ll want to reference this article here where we explain how it’s done for both browsers. Below are the links that you’ll need if you want to use Google Talk in your sidebar:

For a Google Account: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/m
For a Google Apps account: http://hostedtalkgadget.google.com/a/mydomain.com/talkgadget/m

(Credit to Digital Inspiration for providing the links)

Above is a screenshot of what Google Talk for iPhone looks like in the sidebar of Firefox. In no time, you’ll have a simple and clean version of Google Talk running in your sidebar. For those of you who prefer things simple, you’ll probably get a lot of using out of Google Talk for the iPhone, even if you don’t own an iPhone!

Source

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on November 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Have a hard time keeping up with your favorite RSS feeds? Feed Crier is here to help you. It’s a free service that requires no registration, but with it you can get notified of new items in some of your favorite RSS feeds.

If your’e using AIM, MSN, Jabber, or Google Talk you just need to add the following bot to your list of friends:

• FeedCrier on AIM
• feedcrier@feedcrier.com on MSN, Jabber, and Google Talk

After Feed Crier has been added as a friend in your instant messenger you can send it one of the following commands to manage your feed subscriptions:

• subscribe [URL] – Subscribes to the web site at URL.
• unsubscribe [URL] – Unsubscribes from the web site at URL.
• list – Shows all the sites you’re subscribed to.
• help – Shows this list of supported commands.

I tried it out and it’s actually pretty nice. As you can see in the screenshot above each feed item includes the title, hyperlink, and a brief summary of the article’s content. You definitely won’t want to use this for any highly active sites because it will be popping up with messages all of the time. If you only want to track a site that posts a few times a day it shouldn’t be too bad.

Feed Crier [via Lifehacker]

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Google I/O just wrapped up, so now we’re inevitably waiting for all the new features to start rolling out. The first out of the gate is the new Google+ Hangouts app, which is now available for Android. The app replaces Google Talk on Android, and will also eventually make its way to iOS, making it the first time that a Google chat app will be released on iOS.

Google talked a lot about Google+ Hangouts during the keynote, and they essentially took all of their different chat clients and combined them into one. The app will let you message other Google users, as well as video chat with them using Google’s Hangouts feature that we’ve all seen before in Google+.

The cool thing with this new app is that you can message a friend and have it delivered to them without them actually being signed in, making it a viable option for a text messaging replacement, rather than just another IM client of sorts. The app includes the ability to insert photos and videos, and there’s even cross-platform support with a web version as well.

Of course, before you get to chatting using the new app, you’ll need to sign up for Google+. This isn’t time-consuming, as Google+ uses your Google account anyway, but you’ll simply need to confirm a few things and get your profile initially set up. Once that’s done, you’ll be all set and ready to chat away with friends and family.

However, Hangouts doesn’t have an “Invisible” status available, which could be a turn-off for some users, but we can’t say that many users will miss that feature. Other than that, the app is ready to go. We’re not sure when the iOS version will be releasing, but we’re guessing it’s currently in the hands of Apple as they take it through their submission process.

UPDATE: Google+ Hangouts is now available on iOS.

Google+ Hangouts for Android now live, replaces Google Talk [UPDATE] is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Outlook.com is taking a major step to woo Gmail devotees by integrating Google Talk contacts into its webmail messenger service.