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February 2, 2006

Gtalkr’s New Features

Michael Arrington

27 comments »

Colorado-based Gtalkr originally launched in November 2005 as a Flash based way to access Google Talk, Gmail and Yahoo maps from a website. I drew comparisons to Meebo as well as the Ajax home page crowd (my current list is here).

Gtalkr released a ton of new functionality today. First of all, Gtalkr is now extensible, so third parties can easily create and release their own widgets. If Gtalkr becomes more popular, we’ll start to see a lot of these.

The other new functionality includes:

  • YouTube integration: You can search for videos and play them right on the Gtalkr site
  • Flickr integration: search for any user or tag on Flickr and show a slideshow of pictures on the site
  • Additional Flickr stuff: Your gmail contacts now show a Flickr icon automatically. Just click on the flickr icon next to a name and see their pictures. This is a really clever use of the Flickr API, which allows applications to search for users via an email address.
  • System tray notifier: download a small client and get email and instant messenger notifications even when you are off Gtalkr
  • Whole page scroll: In the original release Gtalkr tried to fit all content into the viewable area (A flash issue); now the page is scrollable.

RSS feeds can also be integrated, and I really like the ability to simply drag the box to make it show more or fewer posts for a given feed. Any item in an RSS box can also be dragged into an IM window to send to a friend.

And this isn’t all. Gtalkr is also integrating AIM into the site within a couple of weeks, and has a number of other great features coming as well which they are asking not be blogged about yet.

Gtalkr is a two man team, created by brothers Wes and Dudley Carr.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Oliver Zheng

    February 2nd, 2006 at 1:54 pm

    I’m not a fan of using a website for IM needs, but that extension API does look really useful. Imagine a widget that doesn’t use up memory like all the other IM programs. Only if other IM programs supported that.

  2. Gavin

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:18 pm

    I logged into Gtalker and some how about 20 people that I have emailed today got an “invite” saying to join them on gtalkr. I will never use the site again.

  3. Dudley

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:24 pm

    Gavin,

    We’ve added a feature where people are emailed about joining Gtalkr when you’ve invited them to the Google Talk network. What you’re describing doesn’t sound correct, and I’ll look into it immediately.

  4. midbach

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    I wouldn’t use a product that doesn’t ask me if I would like to invite my contacts.

    I don’t care if it’s just the people I have invited to Google Talk or not. Going ahead without my permission makes me look bad in the eyes of those people.

    Ask me first.

  5. Dudley

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    The idea is for the Gtalkr only to send the emails when you explicitly invite someone, so I am in agreement with you.

    However, the Gtalkr invitation process was partially broken before today’s release. We added logic to re-invite people who previously may not have gotten the invitation.

    Since the solution we have in place is less than ideal, we’ll remove that logic all together, and only have it send out emails when you using the invite dialog.

    Regards,
    Dudley

  6. macewan

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:47 pm

    hrm, looks like you’re their audience is limited to Windows folks only

    *requires flash 8*

  7. Dudley

    February 2nd, 2006 at 2:50 pm

    Flash 8 runs on Windows and OS X. The desktop notifier is only for Windows at the moment, but an OS X version is in the works. Flash 8, I believe, can be used on Linux in-conjunction with CrossOver office.

  8. Dudley

    February 2nd, 2006 at 3:05 pm

    We’ve updated the Gtalkr Flash client so that it will not under any circumstance send out invitation emails before explicit interaction from the user.

    For the people who ran into this problem, our apologies for the unexpected behaviour.

  9. hapablap

    February 2nd, 2006 at 4:49 pm

    I cant get the youtube extension to work properly. The videos fail to load.

  10. ariel

    February 2nd, 2006 at 5:05 pm

    Works perfectly for me… I think this rocks and points to the future.

  11. Dudley

    February 2nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    The YouTube website has been very finicky over the past couple of days. It’s been better for me since this morning with only one or two outages.

  12. Ryan Tate

    February 2nd, 2006 at 7:37 pm

    I can’t get an extension to work.

    I even tried downloading the buddy pounce swf and xml. I then put it on my server (changed the path to the swf on my server) and tried loading it with no luck.

    I get: “Error unable to load or verify extensionâ€

    Since yall have no kind of forum on your site, I suppose this is the next best place to post this.

  13. orli yakuel

    February 3rd, 2006 at 3:24 am

    I Ues googlTalk only through this web site and it’s work just wonderful.
    I Love the new format and the fact that you can watch users Flickr.
    I Also think they can grow biger with all kind of extensions. maybe GoogleVideo will be a nice idea..

    The site is a little bit heavy but it’s a unique flash format so i’ll forgive them for that ;)

  14. Billy Warhol

    February 3rd, 2006 at 8:58 am

    I luvv Flickr so I’ll be givin this a look fer sure************

    Sounds Awesome************* ;))

  15. Jeff (aka DAMAN)

    February 3rd, 2006 at 11:14 am

    I’ve been using this website since November of ‘05. I love it. I sit behind a corporate firewall where the Gtalk client doesn’t work. This lets me and my wife (and my other friends) keep in touch throughout the day.

    Wes and Dudley have always been responsive to user feed back…I’m a big fan.

    GTalkR for President!

  16. Allison

    February 3rd, 2006 at 2:41 pm

    I have enjoyed watching Gtalkr grow and add some amazing new features since it was released in November. I also sit behind a corporate firewall, and am just waiting for them to figure out that I can use IM online. Crossing my fingers it doesn’t happen soon! :) Thanks, guys, for working so hard and developing such an innovative and much needed product that even technologically challenged chicks like myself can use!

  17. ryan

    February 4th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

    I’m having troubles scrolling on the site, despite this article saying the site is now scrollable. It just doesn’t seem to work for me; any advice?

  18. Dudley

    February 4th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    If you add enough content containers ie. RSS feeds, then the webpage will becoming scrollable.

  19. Jeff (aka DAMAN)

    February 4th, 2006 at 8:30 pm

    You can also resize one of your windows down…that’s what I did.

  20. Chip Poutine

    February 6th, 2006 at 8:17 am

    Thanks very much for the post on Gtalkr.

    I tried it as a result of this article, and liked everything except the inability to scroll through the page with the mouse wheel.

    I sent a suggestion through regarding this request, simply because I thought the mechanism to do so was kind of need, but not expecting much from it in return.

    To my surprize, not only did Wes personally write me back to acknowledge the issue, he sent a follow-up message letting me know that scrolling with the mouse wheel was now possible.

    This couldn’t have come at a better time, just as I was getting completely fed up with refreshing firefox a thousand times to fix the screwy columns on my google homepage.

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