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Filed under: Google, Social Software, Web

Fast fix - block your *unwanted* contacts from Google Chat

by Dolores Parker Sep 20th 2009


If you're like me, there may be several contacts that appear in your Google chat that you probably would never dream of emailing again, let alone having a late night chat with. Well the good news is you don't have to live with their names staring at you taking up desirable real estate screen space on your Gmail page. Here's how you can get rid of them in the good, non literal way.

Click on Contacts on the left side of your Google page.

Then, select the person you'd like to block. When you click on their name a window will open and you will see a "Show in Chat List" drop down menu. You can select from Auto, Always, Never, and Block.

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Tags: Block contacts from Google Chat, BlockContactsFromGoogleChat, Google chat, Google chat list, google talk, GoogleChat, GoogleChatList, GoogleTalk

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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Web services, Google, Social Software, AOL, web 2.0

Gab your life away on Facebook and Google Chat with Gabtastik

WindowsMacby Drew Olanoff Jun 13th 2008

GabtastikFacebook has put out their chat service, Google has Google chat. There's no desktop app for Facebook, but there is one for Google chat.

Confusing, and annoying. It's also confusing and annoying to have to use those services in separate programs or multiple tabs in a web browser.

AIM is probably the most popular IM service known to man and woman, iChat for Mac...these are both desktop experiences.

Enter Gabtastik.

For Windows XP and Mac OS X, Gabtastik wants to take your browser chatting to the desktop where a lot us feels that it should stay. The program takes you to a page just like a web browser would to log in. It did seem a little slow to pull in Facebook data. That could be an issue.

You can switch back and forth between Facebook chat and Google, as well as change the opacity of the application itself so that it doesn't become an annoyance by overpowering your desktop. Make it invisible if that floats your boat.

This is a great way to not be tethered to either site via browser 24/7 and still be in contact with your friends who either are tethered or are cool enough to use something like Gabtastik. The downside is that you still have to have AIM or iChat up along with this if you use them too.

Gabtastik calls itself a "Site Specific Browser" for web chat services, so will other services be included as they pop up as well? Let's hope so!

Gabtastik is not the first to do pull these services away from their respective sites, Digsby handles it, and so does a sweet Firefox trick.

Tags: adium, aim, facebook, gabtastik, google chat, GoogleChat, im

Filed under: Internet, Google, Googleholic

Googleholic for February 26, 2008

by Romeo Wahed Feb 26th 2008

Googleholic for February 26, 2008
Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

This edition covers:
  • Put Google Talk in your blog - "chatback"
  • Pakistan's YouTube ban causes two hour downtime
  • Google helps lay another undersea cable to Japan
Put Google Talk in your blog - "chatback"

Google Talk has announced a new feature called "chatback," which is a way for you to better connect with visitors to your blog or online profile, by allowing them to chat with you directly from your site. The visitors won't need to download anything or sign up for an account - as long as you're online with your Google Talk account, they can message you via the chatback widget you throw up on your site. If this sounds like a good way to add value to your site, grab the widget.

Pakistan's YouTube ban causes two hour downtime

According to BBC News, the recent downtime on YouTube was a result of ISPs in Pakistan attempting to reroute traffic from YouTube after Pakistan wanted the site banned for containing some anti-Islamic content of Dutch origin. Apparently, the ISP shared its Border Gateway Protocol data for blocking YouTube within Pakistan with other ISPs, which passed it on to others. Nice. But things have resolved now, and everyone can get their daily dose of YouTube again without interruption.

Google helps lay another undersea cable to Japan

Google is part of an effort to lay another undersea cable to Japan, together with five other partners, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Singtel, KDDI, and Pacnet. The whole project costs about $300 million and will be done in about 2010, adding about 7.5 tbps of bandwidth.

Other Google related bits we've been covering at Download Squad:

Tags: chatback, google, google chat, google talk, GoogleChat, googleholic, GoogleTalk, youtube

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