December 15th, 2007
New version of the Google Talk client disables voicemail and more
Several people have noticed a new version of Google Talk (1.0.0.105) in the wild that is available to download from here. We’ve been waiting since January for a new version, and it’s unfortunate to see that when we finally get one, it removes several features that I thought were really great — including voicemail.
In previous versions of Google Talk, if someone tried to call and you didn’t pick up, the caller would be asked to record a mesage. That recording would then appear in the recipients Gmail as a voicemail message. I guess it would be fair to ask, how many people actually used the voicemail feature? I liked it, but I’ve personally never received a real message, or left one — maybe this is the rationale behind its removal?
Besides voicemail, it appears Google has also removed Orkut integration, and the “show what I’m listening to” feature.
It would be nice to see a new version of the Google Talk client which includes great new features — it’s been far too long since we’ve see anything new in this application. This version does have some minor updates though — David Hetfield from the Google Blogoscoped forums noticed the following:
- Now, when you click the green phone icon, it opens a new window, and initiate a call.
- After you’ve closed a chat window, and got back to it, the history will get a gray color.
- After you hover a contact, you no longer get options for this contact, just a window showing the contact’s name, status, and email.
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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