

Google Talk for Developers - ovechtrick
https://developers.google.com/talk/

======
kyro
I'll take this opportunity to kindly request that someone build an alternative
to gTalk and Skype for video chatting. The forums for both are filled with
complaints that do not ever get answered. Both products are huge resource hogs
– gTalk will freeze my browser and Skype repeatedly disconnects and just slows
down my entire machine. And it seems to happen to many, many people out there.
On top of that, we all know Google offers little to no customer service, and
it seems as if the Skype folks have just completely abandoned addressing any
issues.

I've said this before: we are long, long overdue for a gTalk/Skype killer for
video chat. At this point, I'm willing to pay for something better.

~~~
hugs
I agree we're overdue for a Skype killer. The technology that's going to power
it is called "WebRTC".

<http://www.webrtc.org/>
<http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/basics/>

Watch this video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8C8ouiXHHk>

You can play with WebRTC now in Google Chrome. Enable the chrome://flags:
<http://www.webrtc.org/running-the-demos>

Then play with this demo: <https://webrtc-demos.appspot.com/html/gum1.html>

Then play with the source code: [http://code.google.com/p/webrtc-
samples/source/browse/#svn%2...](http://code.google.com/p/webrtc-
samples/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fdemos%2Fhtml)

Have fun!

~~~
darklajid
Please don't build another 'You should "upgrade" your browser to Chrome'
service.

WebRTC might be cool, the demo looks cool, but the official site says that it
might break or go away anytime and - please, please, please never ignore this
- only one single browser seems to support that tech.

Fool around with it, but this can _never_ be part of a Skype killer until
everyone can use it.

~~~
rdtsc
_never_ really?

step 1 - download dev version of chrome into a separate folder

step 2 - enable webrtc in flags://

step 3 - put a shortcut on your Desktop that points to this and says "Skype-
NG" or something like that.

How is that different now than going and clicking on Skype from running and
launching point of view. Bonus points, can also browse the web if you want.

Skype also might break or might go away anytime too. Or, rather, more likely
will interrupt your video stream every 5 minutes to show you adds about dating
sites and Nigerian scams.

~~~
est
how about:

1\. download some 1MB binary. No depends or 3rd lib runtime or shit.

2\. BAM! Voice and video group chat. S2S federated with all other XMPPs.

~~~
rdtsc
So both are pretty easy and neither is unrealistically impossible as the
grandparent suggested...

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ZoFreX
This is absolute hogwash. Google Talk moved away from the standards it was
built on a long time ago and this token gesture does nothing to make it any
easier for developers to integrate their systems. If Google really wanted to
be open, here's what they would do:

* Create an XEP for the method they use for history replay so that other clients and servers can get in on that goodness

* Implement XEPs that the most popular XMPP clients have that Talk does not (for example contact sharing so you can use transports without having to click "yes" to adding a contact 200 times)

* Either bring their Jingle in-line with the standard /which they helped create/ or create a new version of the standard incorporating their proprietary changes

* Release the protocol that the Google Talk Android app uses. It's proprietary, slimmed-down, and means that any other XMPP client or GTalk client on Android is at a huge disadvantage in terms of sign-in time and data usage.

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Kilimanjaro
Allow me to connect to GTalk via webSocket and I'll do the rest. Appengine
already support xmpp bots so it would be a piece of cake to manage presence,
stanzas, etc.

That's all I ask for:

    
    
        ws = new WebSocket('ws://talk.google.com:5222')

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mikeevans
What's so special about this? I thought it was common knowledge that Google
Talk was on Jabber/XMPP.

~~~
ChrisClark
I think this now allows people to write clients that can also use voice and
video chat through Talk.

~~~
mikeevans
>Last updated March 23, 2012.

Doesn't look like there has been any recent changes that warrant being on the
front page.

~~~
ChrisClark
Hmm, good point.

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cmatthieu
I agree and recently started working on a peer-to-peer, audio/video chat
client called twelephone - here's a demo of the WebRTC-based project as of
this weekend. <http://youtu.be/9GvBe0kCJGI>

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Yrlec
If you're looking for Java alternative to libjingle (which is written in C++)
then I can recommend Jitsi (<https://jitsi.org/>). From what I understand they
are more or less compatible with each other.

~~~
marquis
Also check out the fantastic OpenFire XMPP server written in hava, works great
with http-bind, strophe.js and even custom XMPP filters in javascript. Now we
just have to solve the elusive clustering issue with an open-source
alternative.

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wamatt
And now if they could combine Google Voice and Google Talk into a combined
product....

~~~
ErikTheRed
Don't forget Messenger! I wish they'd at least have a desktop or web client
for it.

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pm90
Its high time that they also released an api for google voice[1] . If there
are any googlers reading this: why has this not been done yet? I've been
looking into this in my spare time as there is no google voice client for
Meego (Nokia N9) and I wanted to write one/improve an existing one[2]

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1668619/is-there-a-
google...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1668619/is-there-a-google-voice-
api)

[2] <http://code.google.com/p/qgvdial/>

~~~
untog
My perception for all of this is that Google Voice is a deeply controversial
project to people like cellphone networks, who Google need for Android. That's
why we haven't seen APIs, VOIP calling, etc. It seems to be stuck in a rut,
and I suspect it's political rather than technical.

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jeffxl
Wait, Jingle supports file transfers, but Google Chat currently doesn't?

~~~
abraham
It depends on the Chat client. The older Talk windows client supports file
transfers.

<http://www.google.com/talk/about.html>

~~~
jeffxl
That sucks, I guess for iChat or Messages to support file transfers with Gmail
they'd have to have a specific Account Type for GChat which implements Jingle
extensions, instead of just going through Jabber.

