Google Talk, from 2005, will shut down for good later this week
Google Talk, the instant messaging service from 2005 that’s been in limbo for years, is being shut down permanently this week.
Expand Expanding Close
Google Talk app for Windows getting the final axe on February 16th
If you’re still using the Google Talk app for Windows, it might be a good idea to make your way over to Hangouts. According to a message that some users are receiving when logging in, Google Talk is going to stop working in about a week (via BI India).
Google Talk app for Windows will stop working on 16 Feb. 2015. It is replaced by the new Hangouts Chrome app. Install the Hangouts app from http://goo.gl/yglfk6
Chances are that you stopped using the service, called Gtalk by its loyal users, years ago. But it looks like even those who still do—and, trust me, there’s a loyal fanbase that does exist—will be forced to move over to Hangouts effective February 16th.
This message is very similar to others that we’ve been seeing over the last year. Here’s one from November of 2014 (via Mark’s PC Solution):
We’ve reached out to Google for confirmation.
Google Talk & Hangouts bug sends messages to the wrong recipients – Google investigating
Update 2, Sept. 27: Google is reporting that Google Talk issues have now bee resolved for all users.
Update, Sept. 27: Some users are continuing to experience issues with Google Talk services today. Google says it expects “a resolution for all users in the near future.”
TechCrunch alerted us to an issue with Google Talk and Google Hangouts, which is rather alarmingly resulting in some messages being delivered to the wrong recipients.
Outlook adds support for Google Talk in appeal to Gmail users
Microsoft is rolling out Google Talk integration to its online email service Outlook, which is something that could tempt Gmail users try out the less popular competing service.
Microsoft, which owns its own chat service by way of its Skype purchase, is using Google’s public API to include Google Talk integration on Outlook.com. The timing is interesting as we expect Google to announce its new messaging service at Google I/O this week.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Meebo enters into acquisition agreement with Google
Reports circulated last month that Google wanted to buy social messaging service Meebo for roughly $100 million, and now those stories have finally received official confirmation.
Meebo verified the news today in a post on the company blog (above):
We are happy to announce that Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!
For more than seven years we’ve been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging. Together with Google, we’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike.
We’ve had a blast building Meebo so far and we’re really excited to start the next leg of our journey.
Thank you all for coming along for the ride!
Meebo Team
Meebo began in 2005 as a browser-based instant messaging program with support for Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, and others. The service now boasts mobile apps, and it features multi-user chat rooms, a content aggregator, and the ability for users to check-in and share media across popular social networks. It even offers APIs for developers.
Samsung Open Sources Galaxy Tab 2 ICS software
Samsung announced some less-important news last night, compared to the announcements made earlier yesterday. However, this might be exciting for the developer community: Samsung has open-sourced the code that runs both the 7-inch and 10-inch Galaxy Tab 2 models. Samsung posted the code over at its open source page.
With the open source code, developers can now put their own spin on the version of Ice Cream Sandwich that Samsung makes available on the Tab 2. The Tab 2 does not feature an outright version of Android 4.0, because it has Samsung’s custom TouchWiz UI layer on-top. TouchWiz adds various UI enhancements and apps to ICS, some of which are actually pretty useful.
Do you think you are up for a little code tinkering? Try it! You can check out the model numbers for the Tab 2 after the break.
Amazon drops price on the 8-inch Vizio VTAB to $199, makes it a Kindle Fire competitor
.
Interesting move here by Amazon. By dropping the nicely-specced Vizio VTab eight inch tablet to $199, they’ve created a competitor to their own Amazon Kindle Fire tablet which at 7 inches is also priced at $199.
The VTab runs Android 2.3, has 4GB of built in storage and an SD card slot for additional storage and 512MB of RAM. It bests the Kindle Fire with a bigger, higher resolution 1024 x 768 display, front facing camera for video conferencing (with Google Talk and Skype), built in IR blaster, an SRS 3 speaker sound system as well as an internal GPS.
It lacks the Kindle’s Dual Core processor.
For my money, this beats a Kindle Fire.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Review: Sprint Epic 4G Touch. Keeps getting better.
If you are on Sprint and you love huge, beautiful screens on your smartphones, you can pretty much stop reading here and go get yourself the Galaxy S2 varient dubbed the Sprint Epic 4G Touch. The WiMAX candybar flagship phone is $199 on a 2 year 4G contract or $149 at Amazon.
But if you care about everything else an Android phone has to offer, keep reading, it mostly just keeps getting better…
Google Automated car gets in its first accident? (Update: Human Error)
.
You knew this was going to happen at some point. A Google automated car with that spinny thing at the top was in what looks like a minor rear ending incident near Google HQ in Mountainview. While it doesn’t appear that anyone was hurt (even the two Prii above), it isn’t exactly a vote of confidence for the fledgling product that Google hopes will materialize into a useful product within a decade.
Before we pass judgement based on a tipster’s photo – we’ll wait for Google’s post mortem.
Update: As we thought – human was at the wheel for this fender-bender. Google sent over this statement:
“Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.”
Nexus S goes free at Best Buy on Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile
.
This feels more like the Google Phone that was promised a year and a half ago – which was supposed to hit all carriers. The carriers would then have to fight on prices and quality of service.
As of today, the Samsung Nexus S is now at Best Buy free with a two year plan on 3 of the 4 big US Networks. Get your Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T Nexus S here.
Now, it almost feels like a new superphone running Ice Cream Sandwich is in the works.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Why get a Galaxy Tab instead of an iPad 2
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 gets a lot of flack for arriving in its newly svelte body late to the tablet game with a 3.1 update. But it is undoubtedly the best Honeycomb tablet out there. Immediately, it was my favorite tablet to use, even with its buggy 3.0 software at Google I/O. With the much improved 3.1 update, The Tab is now a complete system that will only get better.
Rather than do a review, I’m going to answer a bigger question: Why get a Galaxy Tab instead of an iPad 2. And I’m not going to give reasons like “You are a geek and love the Google ecosystem”. Here we go: