Set your Google Talk picture from your webcam

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.

I wrote this as a small side project to teach myself Flash/Actionscript, which was quite, um, interesting, given my C++ background (I miss static type checking). It was a lot of fun though, and I owe many thanks to our UX designers who helped supply the necessary "Googley" factor.

You can try it out here in the Google Talk gadget - simply click on your Google Talk picture in the upper right hand corner, and choose the "Take Photo..." option (you'll need a webcam to see this option). You can also see how it works (in Japanese) in this unofficial video.

There are a few undocumented keyboard shortcuts for this feature:

• SPACE will take a picture
• ESC will discard the taken picture
• ENTER will save it as your Google Talk picture

Have fun, and feel free to post feedback.

Google Talk + AIM = Now!

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.

As a longtime resident of the AIM universe, I never thought that I would give up my favorite AIM Lite for a web client. But the AIM integration in Gmail is that good. It's fast, easy to set up and use, and works on any computer. Best of all, it saves your IM sessions in Gmail, which makes it easy to remember a conversation from months ago. Bottom line: if you use Gmail and use AIM, you'll probably really enjoy the combined experience.

Some answers on what are likely to be FAQs:

• By default, your AIM buddies are displayed in the "most popular" order typically used in Gmail and Google Talk. To view them in alphabetical order (and enable the scrollbar), click on "Options" at the bottom of the contact list on the left side and choose "Top 250".
  
• You can also adjust the size of your contact list by clicking on "Options" and selecting between "Tiny", "Small", "Medium", and "Large".
• AIM users that are away or idle show up as yellow dots. The away message, if present, is displayed in the contact list.
  
• Your Gmail status message carries over to AIM, and vice versa.
  
• You can see AIM users' buddy icons, but setting your Gmail user avatar does not currently affect your own AIM icon.
• If you log into Gmail using HTTPS (as I mentioned here), your AIM session will be secured as well.
  
• This integration is not XMPP Federation. This was a contractual limitation. On the plus side, this means Gmail users don't need to manually add all their AIM friends to their Gmail contact list.
  
• The AIM implementation was developed on top of the Open AIM libraries. (It's a little weird knowing that the code my team wrote at AOL is now running in Google datacenters.)

Like it? Hate it? Favorite feature missing? Wish something was a little bit different? Send me a note, or drop a comment in the Gmail suggestion box.

Mount Si in the Snow

From Mount Si in t...

They say there is no such thing as a Seattle hiker who hasn't been to the top of Mount Si. With that in mind, I hiked the 4,167 foot mountain a few weeks ago with my brother, hoping a great view of the Snoqualmie valley would be waiting for us at the summit.

Well, not exactly. Above 3500 feet, the temperature dropped below freezing, the Seattle rain turned into snow, and there was little protection from the wind. We scrambled over snowy, slippery rocks to arrive at the first summit, where we found that the view was indeed terrific... for about 100 feet.

Regardless, the snow added a fun twist on what was already a great hike. If you ever have the chance to hit Mount Si when the conditions are right for snow, I highly recommend trying it.

1 Year at Google!

Tuesday marks a year for me at Google. Woohoo! I think that means I'm no longer a Noogler. I still can't disclose what I'm working on (although it is extra-awesome).

But my AOL non-recruit agreement has expired. Now accepting resumes!

Google expanding in Kirkland

As mentioned today in the Seattle Times, Google has signed a lease to occupy a new three-building office campus in Kirkland just down the street from our current offices. At 180,000 square feet, this will provide a lot of much-needed space as we grow our staff from the current 400+ employees to the goal of "several thousand". No word yet on whether the Kirkland campus will feature a Tyrannosaurus skeleton.

Update: Another story, with pictures, in the Seattle P-I.


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Lessons Learned: Google Tech Talk on Building Scalable Systems

Reza Behforooz, tech lead for the Google Talk service, recently gave a presentation at a Google-sponsored scalability conference in Seattle. In his talk, Reza discussed many of the challenges involved with running a large-scale service, and how Google Talk has addressed these problems. While it doesn't give away all the secrets, the presentation does provide valuable insight into the Google Talk service architecture.

It's also interesting to note that many of the methods used to scale the Google Talk service to millions of online users were the same ones used at AOL to scale up the AIM service. There are a number of minor architectural differences between the two systems (XML vs binary protocol, gatewayed connection to presence server vs direct, for starters), but the essentials are very similar.

You can watch the full talk with Q&A below, or if you'd rather just read the highlights, check out Dare Obasanjo's notes from the conference.

Random IM of the Week

In my work on AIM and Google Talk, I get a lot of random people sending me messages. Some of the IMs are funny, some are bizarre, and more than a few are social engineering attempts. But one conversation I had last week was sufficiently random to be worth sharing.

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?

Google Tips and Tweaks

Saw a couple interesting blog posts recently with tips for Google web search and Gmail.

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.

iPhone in a Blender

Ever wonder what would happen if you put an iPhone in a blender? Me neither. But it's pretty amazing to watch anyway. Check this and other interesting blendings out over at willitblend.com.

Google NYC

Just got back from 3 weeks on the East Coast. After 8 months in Seattle, I had completely forgotten what hot & humid feels like! (For those unfamiliar with East Coast summers: like walking through a warm marshmallow.)

I spent a week of that time at the Google office in New York City. It's an incredible facility - the building takes up an entire Manhattan city block, and the view from the cafeteria on the 8th floor is truly remarkable.

The culture is definitely different than either the Kirkland or Mountain View offices - still Googley, but with much more of an urban feel. If this sounds interesting to you, you can find out more about Google NYC here.

Seattle Times: The lure of great Google perks

Brier Dudley, columnist from the Seattle Times, visited our Kirkland office earlier this week to check out the Google culture and see where we're heading. His story about his visit contains some great quotes from Kirkland engineers on what it's like to work 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.

Instant messaging: feature or product?

From VentureBeat: Instant messaging: feature or product?:

An interesting article about how instant messaging is increasingly being integrated into web applications. Just like web email largely replaced desktop email clients, a similar shift is starting to happen with instant messaging. Here's what the article has to say about Google Talk:

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.

NES Nostalgia

A co-worker mentioned this little gem to me this week: 100 of the top NES games, playable in your browser with no download. It's implemented as a Java applet, and the games play pretty well, with only an occasional framerate stutter.

In addition to Super Mario, there's Zelda, 1942, Double Dragon, Tecmo Super Bowl, and 95 other ways to trigger a late 80's flashback.

If you find yourself addicted, many of these games are available from the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console.

Windows Live Messenger Customer Study

From Inside Windows Live Messenger: "RESULTS: What is your favorite messenger feature?"

What is your one favorite Messenger Feature?
* 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

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.

Where did April go?

When you're heads down and cranking, time sort of seems to disappear. All of us have been pretty busy lately working on some great new features and integrations, but we always enjoy the speculation on exactly what it is we might be working on. Google's recent purchase of videoconferencing technology from the startup Marratech definitely started the rumor mill cranking. Some opposing views on what's in store:

InformationWeek: "Could An Enhanced Google Talk Spell The End For Skype?"

IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband: "Google Talk is headed to Google's corporate backwater..."

Commodore Nostalgia

Just got done reading "On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore", by Brian Bagnall. As someone who grew up right outside Commodore headquarters and learned to write code for both the C64 and Amiga computers, it brought back a lot of memories. If you ever read a copy of COMPUTE!, played a game by Epyx, or experienced a Guru Meditation Error, you'll get a kick out of this book.

The book paints a detailed picture of the various eras of Commodore technology, but it also provides compelling portraits of the engineers and executives responsible for Commodore's successes and missteps. You can really feel for the engineers who invested so much of their lives into the company with seemingly so little in return.

Some interesting factoids are revealed as well. The stories behind why C64 games took so long to load, how the Amiga chips got their names, and why so many Commodore computers were DOA are all covered in the book.

One particular thing that jogged my memory was the descriptions of the various marketing campaigns. I can still recall the strains of J.S. Bach's Invention #13, which was featured in one of the early Commodore commercials. So after finishing the book, I checked to see if any of these commercials could be found on YouTube. YouTube did not disappoint - enjoy the VIC-20, C64, and Amiga commercials in all their 80's glory...

Embedding the Google Talk Gadget

As an embeddable module, the Google Talk Gadget can be put in a number of interesting places. It works great in the Google Personalized Homepage, but here are a few other places where it can be handy:

• Bookmarklet: Drag Google Talk to your Bookmarks Bar for 1-click access to a floating version of Google Talk.
• Firefox Sidebar: go to http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client, bookmark it, and check the "Load this bookmark in the Sidebar" checkbox in the dialog that pops up:
  Hit OK, click the bookmark, and it will open in Firefox's sidebar panel.
  
  
• Netvibes: Check it out in your Netvibes Homepage.
  

Google Talk Gadget

Today, we're releasing the Google Talk Gadget - a embeddable component that provides a rich IM experience anywhere on the web! It's Flash-based, so it's nice and snappy, requires no download, and works anywhere Flash 8 is supported, including Mac OS X and Linux. It's got the same look and feel as the downloadable Google Talk client, along with some cool new features, including integration with YouTube and Picasa - if you add a video as your status message, your friends can watch the video directly from Google Talk!

See it in action, or check it out in this YouTube video. If you're using the Google Personalized homepage, you can add the gadget to your page. Or, if you'd like to add it to your own page, learn how here.

More coverage on the Google Talk Blog and Official Google Blog.

Matt Cutts on "Not trapping users' data"

Matt Cutts had a great post the other day about how Google is making good on Eric Schmidt's promise to not trap user data. Eric had spoken out at last year's Web 2.0 conference against web companies locking users in by preventing them from taking their personal data somewhere else.

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.

Matt also mentions Google Talk, noting that the service supports the open XMPP protocol and therefore can be accessed by any XMPP client. That's definitely a big positive; in addition, you can export your contacts as a CSV file from Gmail (go to "All Contacts", click on "Export"). However, there's no easy way right now to get at your saved chat history; Gmail's POP access doesn't include chats. Clearly, that's something we'll want to address in the future.

Update 3:25 PM: added explanation on how to export contacts.

Lessons Learned: Google Report on Hard Drives

The other day, several Googlers released a white paper detailing the experiences they have had with hard drive failures in our datacenter machines. According to the report, there hasn't been a good study on hard disk lifespans in a really large population, so the decision was made to collect this data from the large number of machines that Google has in service. The study reached several conclusions, some of them surprising:

• There was no consistent pattern of disk failure associated with high temperature or increased disk activity.
  
• Some SMART error signals are well-correlated with impending drive failure, including scan errors, reallocation errors, and probational counts; drives that reported a scan error were 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days.
• However, other SMART error signals have only weak correlations with failure, namely seek errors and CRC errors; over 72% of all drives reported at least one seek error.
  
• A majority of the failed drives (56%) reported none of the aforementioned well-correlated errors, and a large fraction (36%) reported no SMART errors whatsoever.

As someone who has had a few drives go bad over the years, I found this very interesting. My key takeaway: certain SMART error signals (not all) serve as a valuable warning, but you can't count on SMART to tell you when your drive is about to fail.

Lots more data and details in the full paper.