Google Talk brings browser based chat to iPhone - but no voice

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 03 July 2008 20:21

Your IT - Mobility

Only days before the iPhone 3G’s release, Google brings yet another application to the iPhone, but this one designed to run in the Safari browser, meaning it works on the iPod Touch too, giving you text chat access to all your Google Talk contacts. What’s it like?

I just read about Google Talk being launched for the iPhone and iPod Touch as a web app, so I decided to give it a go, and have been chatting with a friend who uses Gmail, which houses a Google Talk web app of its own.

The details are at the “Official Google Mobile Blog”, and were posted by Adam Connors a software engineer in the Google mobile team.

Connors seems to note the release is for US users, but I’m here in Australia and it’s working just fine.

To use the program, you need but visit www.google.com/talk within Safari on either iDevice, and your list of contacts is displayed, as is your status (be it online, busy, invisible etc).

Just tap on a contact, and you’re taken into a chat room. Tap on the box at the bottom of the screen next to a small send button and the iPhone keyboard pops up, letting you type your message.

You can tap on a ‘down arrow’ to set the message to ‘off the record’ if you wish. But as a web app, you need to have Safari loaded and have the Google Talk window active if you want to communicate with other Google Talk users.

When you’re not logged into the Google Talk app your status is changed to “unavailable”, and will be restarted when you return.

Please read on to page 2.