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chat</title></head><body>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000">Hello,</font><br>
<font size="+1" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000">Just passing along an article in
today's NY Times Technology section. </font></div>
<div><font size="+1"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab><br>
TECHNOLOGY / CIRCUITS | August 25, 2005</font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000">David Pogue: Google Gets Better.
What's Up With That?</font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000">EVER heard the old joke about the
two psychiatrists who pass in a hallway? One says, "Hello there."
The other thinks, "I wonder what he meant by
that?"</font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000">An improved Google Desktop
Search, including Gmail, news, photos and Web clips. Both free Google
tools are for Windows.<br>
<br>
In high-tech circles, that's pretty much what people are saying about
Google these days. If you hadn't noticed, Google is no longer just an
Internet search tool; it's now a full-blown software company. It
develops elegant, efficient software programs - and then gives them
away. In today's culture of cynicism, such generosity and software
excellence seems highly suspicious; surely it's all a smokescreen for
a darker, larger plot to suck us all in. What, exactly, is Google up
to?<br>
<br>
The mystery only intensified this week, as Google announced two more
free software tools for Windows: a new version of Google Desktop
Search and a free instant-messaging program called Google Talk.<br>
<br>
The original version of Desktop Search, which Google unleashed last
fall, brought the speed and effortlessness of Google's Internet search
to your own PC. You'd type a few letters, and in a fraction of a
second, you'd be looking at a complete list of files that included
your search term - even if that term appeared inside the body of a
document. It could even search e-mail, chat-session transcripts and
the contents of Web pages you'd seen.<br>
<br>
Google Desktop 1.0 certainly blew away Windows' own built-in search
tool, which operates with all the speed of an anesthetized slug. But
it was limited in three ways.<br>
<br>
First, you had to operate it from within your Web browser, limiting
its convenience. Second, because it could call up Web pages, e-mail
messages and chat transcripts, Google Desktop alarmed people who,
ahem, had something to hide from bosses or spouses. And finally, it
could see inside only a limited number of document types. For example,
it couldn't search PDF files, Web sites visited with any browser
except Internet Explorer, or e-mail messages except those in Outlook
or Outlook Express.<br>
<br>
VERSION 2 , now available at google.com in what's technically in a
public beta test version, attacks all of these drawbacks with a
vengeance. In Version 2, you can begin a search with a keystroke or by
clicking in the search box that's always on the screen. A pop-up menu
of search results appears as you begin to type and narrows itself with
each additional keystroke. When you see the item you want, you can
open it by clicking or by walking up the list with the arrow keys and
pressing Enter.<br>
<br>
In other words, you can now find and open a certain program, document
or control panel entirely from the keyboard, with blazing speed and
simplicity. This is old news to Mac fans, of course; the Spotlight
feature in Mac OS X 10.4 works the same way. But for Windows XP and
2000 veterans, getting such an omniscient, speedy search feature free
is truly liberating. ( Microsoft plans something similar for the next
version of Windows, due at the end of 2006.)<br>
<br>
Google has also beefed up your privacy options. You can omit search
categories like secure Web sites (banking sites, for example),
password-protected Microsoft Office files, and so on, and you can even
flag individual files so that they'll never appear in the search
results again.<br>
<br>
Finally, the program now recognizes many more document types: e-mail
from Gmail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird and
Mozilla Mail; chat transcripts from AOL or MSN Messenger; Web pages
you've visited using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape or Mozilla;
PDF files; and your Outlook calendar and address book. (And speaking
of Outlook, Google Desktop now installs its own search bar right into
Outlook, meaning that you can search your e-mail collection in the
blink of a cursor.) The company expects to add more kinds of files to
this list, thanks to a public plug-in protocol it has published
online.</font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
Yet believe it or not, the little search box is the last thing you'll
notice when you install Google Desktop. The first thing you'll see is
the Sidebar, a column of rectangular panels hugging the right edge of
your screen. Each is a window onto a different kind of real-time
information from the Internet.<br>
<br>
Some are ho-hum, like your latest incoming Gmail and Outlook e-mail,
news, stock and weather tickers. Others are refreshingly quirky: the
Photos panel shows a continuous, two-inch-tall slideshow of pictures
from your own collection, and the surprisingly useful Scratch Pad is a
blank box where you can type casual notes throughout your workday
(they're saved automatically). Each panel expands horizontally,
drawer-like, to reveal more details when clicked.<br>
<br>
The Sidebar is about as clean-looking as anyone could make it, but
it's still a lot of clutter in a very small space, especially if you
add new panels as they become available. On the other hand, you can
tidy things up quite a bit: drag your Sidebar panels into a different
order, hide the ones you don't use, or collapse them into one-line
summaries.<br>
Skip to next paragraph<br>
Enlarge This Image<br>
<br>
A buddy list, and an exchange, on Google Talk.<br>
Multimedia<br>
Audio Slideshow<br>
Inside Google Desktop Search<br>
Readers<br>
Forum: David Pogue's Columns<br>
<br>
Once again, Google isn't the first company to dream up a modular,
Internet-connected suite of miniprograms; the Sidebar is a lot like
Mac OS X's Dashboard or the shareware programs Desktop X and
Konfabulator. But never mind that; you can't keep a good idea down,
and this is a good one indeed.<br>
<br>
Google's second revelation this week, Google Talk, lets you
communicate with your buddies either by typing or, if your PC has a
microphone and speaker, by speaking. As long as you and your
conversation partner are at Windows computers, you can converse with
spectacular sound quality.<br>
<br>
Now, Google Talk 1.0 is probably the most stripped-down chat program
on earth. No conference calling, video chats or direct
person-to-person file transfers. (Features like these are common in
rivals like Skype, iChat and the messenger programs from AOL, MSN and
Yahoo.) So what, exactly, is Google trying to prove here?<br>
<br>
Its mission, in fact, is far grander. Google Talk aims to end the
ridiculous era of proprietary chat networks. At the moment, AOL, MSN
and Yahoo each maintain separate, incompatible networks. The big boys
each want to be alone in the sandbox, and the losers are their
customers.<br>
<br>
Google Talk, however, is based on an open, published standard that the
company is making available to all. Already, Google Talk communicates
with popular chat programs like iChat, Trillian, Adium, Psi and GAIM,
but that's just the beginning. Google is making overtures to Yahoo,
AOL and Microsoft about making their chat programs compatible;
EarthLink has already agreed to join the federation; and Google is
also inviting the makers of games, collaboration tools and even
cellphones to join in what it hopes will one day be a grand, unified
chat network.<br>
<br>
In the meantime, Google Talk is significant for another reason: it
requires a Gmail account. (Gmail is Google's free, Web-based e-mail
service, whose two most famous aspects are its vast capacity - over
two gigabytes of storage for each account - and the ads that appear,
in small type, off to the right side of each message you read. The ads
are computer-matched to keywords in the body of the message, which
disturbs some privacy advocates.)<br>
<br>
Until now, Gmail accounts were available by invitation only. Google
let the service spread gradually and virally, giving each existing
member a few additional invitations to extend. At one point, people
were actually selling these invitations on eBay.<br>
<br>
As of yesterday, however, all that has changed. Now anyone can get a
Gmail account - and can therefore use Google Talk. But to prevent
spammers and other abusers from snapping up Gmail accounts by the
thousands, Google has designed a clever safeguard: when you apply for
a Gmail account, you must provide a cellphone number.<br>
<br>
Google sends a code to your phone, which you use to complete the
registration. (Actually, you don't have to own a cellphone; you just
have to know somebody with a cellphone. They can get the code for you,
because each cellphone number is good for a number of registrations -
just not hundreds of them.)</font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
In a single week, then, Google, the software company, addressed
deficiencies in Windows, tried to create a grand unified chat and
voice network, and opened its clean, capable, capacious e-mail system
to all comers. All of this software is beautifully done, quick to
download and fun to use - not to mention free and (apart from the
Gmail service) entirely free of ads and come-ons.<br>
<br>
Wish they'd cut it out. Trying to figure out what this company's
really up to is enough to drive you crazy.<br>
<br>
</font></div>
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</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>Joanne Hallisey<br>
Sr. Project Manager<br>
MIT - Information Services and Technology<br>
617-253-1894</div>
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