Did you know you could use the "pop-out" arrow on the top of a chat window to make a video chat bigger? This will separate the video chat into its own window that you can resize and move around as you like.
If you want to make the video chat as large as possible and block everything else out, simply use the Full Screen button in the top left corner of the video area. This will fill up your screen and make your conversation much more immersive. Based on the feedback you've given us, we have added the ability to mute your microphone while in full screen mode. To do this, simply hit the space bar!
Saw this on YouTube today. It's great to see people having fun with our product.
"set up gmail video chat for my parents for while i'm away. they're so impressed that i can click a series of buttons and magically appear." (link)
"Google video chat is pretty awesome in terms of a free service. I am left wondering why Google is not promoting it more aggressively." (link)
"Just discovered Gmail's "Archive" feature, along with a whole slew of things I didn't know existed. Best video chat ever." (link)
As an experiment I tried having a real-time video chat with my dad using Gmail and it worked relatively well. Video/sound cut in and out. Still, it was all quite manageable as you can see from the screen capture...
Here at Google, we're committed to helping build a clean energy future and reducing our carbon footprint. And now Google Talk is part of the solution. We don't know about you, but we were surprised to learn the inconvenient truth that every character (byte) we send in a message results in about 0.0000000000000000034 metric tons* of CO2 being released into the atmosphere! So if we can reduce the number of characters we send when we chat with all our friends, we can help the environment at the same time.Of course, if you want to make an even bigger difference, you may want to look into becoming a Virgle Pioneer.
Teenagers (and some adults) must be aware of this, because they already reduce their character usage by abbreviating words and dropping vowels when they send IM and SMS (text) messages. We think this is a great idea. If all our millions of users started using IM-speak, we'd save hundreds of millions of wasted (and environmentally damaging!) characters.
For example, if we want to say:
As far as I'm concerned, you can give me the twenty dollars you owe me when I see you later.
You could save more than 50% in wasted characters by saying:
AFAIC, U can gve me the 20 $$ YOM whn I CUL8R.
In honor of Earth Day (3 weeks from today: April 22, 2008), on that day our Google Talk servers will start automatically sending your conversations using IM-speak instead of normal words. But you can help save some computing power (and more wasted energy!) by shortening your conversations yourself.
Check out the official Google Talk Blog - this week we launched a feature that allows you to set your Google Talk picture from your webcam.
It's been almost two whole years (and a new job and hometown) since I first blogged about Google Talk and AIM getting together, but today, it's ready to go! Starting this morning, we're rolling out AIM support to all Gmail accounts. You'll be able to link your AIM name to your Gmail account, and contact any of your AIM buddies directly from the Talk client inside Gmail. |
| From Mount Si in t... |
| sender: sir sender: please cancel your hamburger sender: ive asked you twice sir me: cancel sender: sir sender: dont play games with me sender: have you cancelled your hamburger? me: it was a cheeseburger sender: sir that will not do sender: cancel your hamburger now me: can it be a double hamburger? sender: yes sir the more the merrier sender: sir cancel it me: ok cancel my double hamburger then. sender: ASAP sender: sir i cannot cancel it for you sender: it is YOUR hamburger sender: you must do it me: ok. cancelled. sender: sir you and i both know much more effort is required a double hamburger sender: please refrain from playing games sender: sir me: right. my mistake. cancelled cancelled. sender: sir sender: please refrain sender: control yourself sender: no need to yell sender: calm down sender: im willing to negotiate sender: sir? sender: sir if you do not respond your are terminated i hope you realize sender: terminated sir me: my hamburger will be terminated? sender: no you sir will be terminated sender: sir sender: you are terminated due to lack of balls sender has signed off. me: but what about the hamburger? |
From Marc and Angel: 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing
My favorite tip is #1, using Google Image search to search for faces. Try it!
From Trendplex: Top 10 Gmail Tweaks
Here I like the Gmail conversation preview plugin - right click on a conversation to quickly view the conversation in a popup, as shown here.
"My theory is none of this is real and we all went to programmer heaven," [Google engineer Steve] Yegge said.
"I think that every 10 years there's a place to work," he explained. "It was Microsoft in the 1990s, arguably Apple in the '80s. ... Google is that Mecca right now."
Being such a great place to work has definitely helped with recruiting. We've grown substantially since I started 8 months ago, and it looks like this trend is expected to continue.
Managers said they haven't seen a drop in applications and they have authority to hire as many smart people as they can find [...] Google's local engineering group is up to 400; within five years it should have "a couple of thousand employees" in the area.
Brier also enjoyed his Google lunch so much that he wrote a separate column with a review of the food.
Gmail has already successfully integrated the company’s IM platform, GTalk, so that its users can chat while emailing. We’ve also heard rumors that GTalk will be integrated with applications such as Google Docs. AOL and Google also agreed to make their IMs interoperable, albeit in a roundabout way — and it looks like this will happen soon. Like [Microsoft software architect Ray] Ozzie, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been stressing the importance of mobile — like Microsoft, Google is integrating apps across platforms. What’s more, 3rd party sites such as Joost are integrating GTalk into their offerings.
What is your one favorite Messenger Feature?At first, I was surprised by some of these features near the top of the list. Turns out though that they aren't in any particular order.
* IM
* Video Call
* Sharing Folders
* Voice clips
* Emoticons
* Games and Activities
* OIM - Offline IM
* Nudge
* Display Picture and Personal Status Message that follow you
* Ability to log into Messenger with any email address
Hit OK, click the bookmark, and it will open in Firefox's sidebar panel.
Schmidt was asked if users could get all of their search history and export it to Yahoo. “We would like to do that, as long as it is authenticated….If users can switch it keeps us honest.”Matt looks at various Google products and finds that most of them do allow you to export your data, including Search, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Blogger, Google AdWords, Google Groups, and a few others.
I'm not usually a super-early adopter of home electronics. After spending all day thinking about code, I don't want to come home and have to debug my TV setup. But when I heard about the Tivo Series 3, I was instantly interested.Why you should use Gmail... in four acts.
And now that you're convinced you should use Gmail, you can sign up for an account at http://mail.google.com/mail/signup. As of yesterday, we've dropped the invitation requirement for new accounts, so anyone can use Gmail.
gtalk:chat?jid=foo@gmail.com (starts a chat)
andYesterday I saw a post from the Windows Live Messenger team where they said that they recently went over 30 million simultaneous users. Now, lots of statistics are offered up by the major IM networks when referring to their respective audiences, but the two that I like to focus on are simultaneous online users and IMs/day. Claims about "active users" or "total users" can be hard to compare, since it all depends on how you count. Simultaneous users and IMs are clear indications of how many users are stressing the system on a daily basis.
The WLM post got me interested on whether I could determine these numbers for all the major messaging services. A little Googling, and I was able to come up with numbers or reasonable estimates for most of the major services; I've included links to the sources I used. (Google does not release user numbers, so Gtalk is absent from this chart.) Here's the breakdown:
| Service | Active Users | Max Simultaneous Users | Total IMs/day | Dominant Regions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows Live | 204M (1/2007) | 30M (1/2007) | 5.7B (8/2006) | Europe, Latin America, East Asia |
| QQ | 221M (9/2006) | 20M (9/2006) | 4B (estimate) | China, South Africa |
| AIM/AOL/ICQ/iChat | 63M (3/2006) | 10M (estimate) | 2B (estimate) | US, Israel |
| Yahoo | 60M (6/2006) | 10M (estimate) | 2B (estimate) | India, ? |
| Skype | 50M (estimate) | 9M (1/2007) | 0.5B (estimate) | East Asia, Europe |
I couldn't find exact data for some of these numbers, so extrapolated from what I did have. Readers, if you have recent public data for the estimated values (especially Yahoo), I'd be interested to see it.
Nevertheless, from these numbers, it looks like WLM is about as big as Yahoo+AOL+Skype combined. That's a formidable lead in a space that is fairly mature.
A couple nice mentions of the Google Kirkland office in the news in the past few weeks:When we set up an R&D shop in downtown Kirkland, Washington two years ago, we hoped to attract the best talent in the Pacific Northwest -- folks who are serious about their coffee and don't especially want to move to Silicon Valley. Since then we've attracted many engineers who were tickled silly about working on large clusters of several thousands of machines, not to mention shipping web and client-based consumer apps used by millions of people.Seattle Times, 12/22/06, "Google exec heaps praise on local office"
It's such a great office we have here. Google's unusual in a couple of ways. We open engineering offices where the talent is, rather than bringing talent to a location. ... [In Kirkland] we have north of 250 employees, and we're approaching 200 engineers. It's just an incredible growth rate in two years.Seattle Times, 12/15/06, "Google retreats from deal in Bellevue, may shop for office space in Seattle"
[...]
One of the things we're increasingly trying to do is to export Mountain View work to the really incredibly successful non-Mountain View offices. It's clear the Kirkland office is hugely successful. We've got great engineers, great growth rate and incredible delivery. It's clear this is amongst our most successful offices worldwide.
Oscar Oliveira, a broker at Colliers International in Bellevue, said he believes Google has turned its attention to parts of Seattle, such as Belltown and South Lake Union, which tend to be popular with young technology workers.New York Times, 12/9/06, "Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game"
[...]
Google has been advertising for workers to fill a range of engineering-related jobs in the Seattle area. About two years ago, Google opened an engineering center in Kirkland, where it has about 250 employees, up 100 from June. Also, Google in May moved its Seattle sales staff of about 30 from South Lake Union to Fremont, saying the staff could expand to 75.
[...]
Google is expanding in Kirkland, where it occupies two floors at Central Way Plaza, and recently took an additional floor at a nearby building, said engineering director Peter Wilson.
“[Microsoft] had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,” said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After the stock fell, he said, “I wasn’t able to hire anybody for my group.”
Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
“Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent,” he said. “If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds.” (Indeed, Google has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
