About the Author

Chris Shiflett

Hi, I'm Chris, a web developer and a founding member of Analog. I live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

Google Talk

This is probably going to get more attention than it deserves, but apparently Google is announcing their own IM service tomorrow, and it uses the Jabber protocol.

Here's hoping this eliminates the reliability problems I've had with Jabber. From my experience, it is second only to MSN Messenger for worst reliability.

For Gaim users, here's a screen shot to help you get set up. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Update: Now it's official: Google Talk. Apparently it's only for Windows, but they seem to be pretty agreeable to people using other clients.

About This Post

Google Talk was posted on Wed, 24 Aug 2005 at 01:12:58 GMT.

26 Comments

1. Adam Trachtenberg's GravatarAdam Trachtenberg said:

I say not just "communications client," but "communcations platform".

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 at 01:42:44 GMT Link

2. stefan.koopmanschap's Gravatarstefan.koopmanschap said:

thanks, works like a charm indeed.

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 at 07:30:26 GMT Link

3. Jim Plush's GravatarJim Plush said:

yeaaaaaa! just what we need... another IM client to sync to, another browser (eventually) to code to... thanks google 2@#$$%T@@!#

google went from being innovative to going public and having to play catchup to what yahoo offers. Google does some things better but still just playing catch up.

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 at 22:06:27 GMT Link

4. Chris Shiflett's GravatarChris Shiflett said:

Anders Hellstrom has a lot to say about Google Talk:

http://blog.cnb.se/archives/21-Goog...M-business.html

He's the reason I have a Jabber account - he's very enthusiastic about it, so I was convinced to try it. :-)

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 at 00:07:16 GMT Link

5. David's GravatarDavid said:

I have set up Gaim EXACTLY as you've listed above (and others have listed) and it still won't connect...any ideas?

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 at 16:24:20 GMT Link

6. Diop's GravatarDiop said:

Guy with most added "Friends"

Yes, there is one guy who wants to test out Google Talk boundaries and get as many contacts as possible. Add him - tehdsf@gmail.com - and make history.

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 at 18:32:37 GMT Link

7. Sarat's GravatarSarat said:

I tried configuring gaim like shown above but it doesn't work, it says "server doesn't use any supported authentication method". My gaim client version is 1.1.2 and runs on FreeBSD OS. Any idea whats going on ?

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 at 00:09:22 GMT Link

8. Mancho's GravatarMancho said:

Same problem with version 1.5.0. Any ideas?

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 at 05:32:02 GMT Link

9. halil demirezen's Gravatarhalil demirezen said:

thanx

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 at 21:27:45 GMT Link

10. Yoon's GravatarYoon said:

Google servers have been shotty ever since the release of google talk... maybe thats the connection problem, like right now i cant connect to googletalk.

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 at 06:23:35 GMT Link

11. David's GravatarDavid said:

Same error

server doesn't use any supported authentication method

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 at 05:55:38 GMT Link

12. Michele's GravatarMichele said:

Same error. Gosh!

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 at 21:35:26 GMT Link

13. Indrajit's GravatarIndrajit said:

Same error on Redhat9 + Gaim 1.5

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 at 12:08:34 GMT Link

14. dd's Gravatardd said:

Hi all

Same error Gaim 1.5 on SuSE 9.3

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 at 07:44:25 GMT Link

15. sam's Gravatarsam said:

Same error on SuSE 9.1, Gaim 1.5

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 at 21:20:19 GMT Link

16. sameer's Gravatarsameer said:

I'm getting the same too - with the Gaim2.0.0beta2 tho

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 at 01:33:08 GMT Link

17. deeps's Gravatardeeps said:

ERROR: Server does not use any supported authentication method

gaim v2.0.0beta2 on CENTOS

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 at 17:39:43 GMT Link

18. HeadDriller's GravatarHeadDriller said:

Authentication Problem: I ran into same thing when I just installed Gaim v2 Beta2, from an older Gaim. Couldn't find anything on it, so... I installed Gajim. Works great! Just configure the googletalk account the same as for Gaim, basically.

Hope that helps for non-Windows users.

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 at 01:01:46 GMT Link

19. James's GravatarJames said:

ARGH! I'm getting the same errors. I can't seem to figure it out.

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 at 05:48:02 GMT Link

20. louis's Gravatarlouis said:

I can connect very well with the gaim that comes with rhel3, I tried 1.5, 2.0.0beta2 and beta3, they all give "server doesn't use any supported authentication method" error. Interesting. The orig. 1.2 version connects very well...

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 at 12:51:28 GMT Link

21. Pandora's GravatarPandora said:

The reason for those errors is with google's servers themselves. They seem to randomly offer two different things: the first is PLAIN authorization, or their proprietary, centralized X-GOOGLE-TOKEN authorization. The second is only X-GOOGLE-TOKEN and no PLAIN. Who knows if they're gonna fix that, but until they do they can be considered 3rd party client unfriendly.

http://www.ianlewis.org/index.php?p...p;tb=1&pb=1

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 at 04:36:35 GMT Link

22. Freddy's GravatarFreddy said:

I had the same problem and found a way to fix it. Install the gnutls-devel package and GAIM recompile with:

./configure --enable-gnutls=yes

That did the trick for me.

Freddy

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 at 16:12:02 GMT Link

23. ewH's GravatarewH said:

Freddy -

Good tip! Installing the gnutls-devel package and recompiling GAIM with the --enable-gnutls=yes option worked.

I couldn't find any other help on the net...thanks my friend.

-ewH

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 at 03:16:11 GMT Link

24. Matt's GravatarMatt said:

Freddy, good tip indeed, I'm very happy that google talk works again.

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 at 21:30:23 GMT Link

25. RadioKat's GravatarRadioKat said:

Well...one more IM service. I think I must install it and try it. Hope it will be not so difficult with help of all these instructions which are given here.

http://netpeak.net/

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 at 20:18:55 GMT Link

26. blake's Gravatarblake said:

Freddy thanks man. Worked like a charm.

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 at 22:29:05 GMT Link

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