. Currently it is a link to the Ronald McDonald House. Here is the actual for the chat client.
Unfortunately/fortunately I had to sign up for a free google email to get it going. Luckily, this meant that I would get a chance to squash the gmail signup bug on the site. It was easy to fix once I saw the email, so now people with gmail can sign up in droves.
You can simply talk with googletalk too. It has the same mic capaibilty as you get with other online chat clients only the interface is very simple and clean.
What freaks me out is that google so into searching through personal information int he name of advertising. The gmail acount gives you targeted advertisments by reading your email to see what you are into. (e:shawnr) said that it is really accurate at pleasing him. But imagine this. You came home and the mailman had opened all you mail and was like, "oh I saw you got a bill from the doctor, you might be interested in these vitamins that one of my partner companies was selling." Or, "I saw that you got on D on your report card and was thinking you might like these tutorial lessions I am selling."
I like to think that the sytem is really only for advertsing too, but call me a conspiracy tehroist, I think it is one step away rom big brother when you start to accept that most of your communications are not private for the sake of advertisment. Where does it stop. People owuld have never accepted this in the past but now that this privacy wall is crumbling, do you think that people will stop accepting privacy invasion for other means.
Their desktop search freaks me out so bad I would rather have a virus than install it and the toolbar which I feel the same about. Whyw oudl you ever want to allow other poeple to search your computer and browsing patternst o make money off it. I believ that is precisly why people hate spyware and viri. So back to googletalk. Maybe the chat client is different but I see a pattern. They offer you a free service and in return they want to read all of your information and target advertise you and make money off of you communication. Some people are really into that.
I think it just feeds further into this system where every surface and communication becomes an advertisement. That is precisely why I don't use the aim client to chat and use gaim or trillian instead.
We are beginning to accept that every form of communication can be a conduit to an advertisement. This was not always the case with communication. Imagine if books had advertsiements on every page that went with the subject matter. We had books for thousands of years without them. I think 20 years ago people would have seen that as ludicris but now it would be more and more accepted. Just look at magazines. I had some old computers magazines I was looking at the other day and compared it to some new ones. Wow, what a difference the new ones are like 97% advertisments, even when they are disguised as articles.
For now I am perfectly content using a free client such as gaim
where no one is making money off my chatting.
Having someone else serch your computer is a verry scary idea. What if you download things illegaly or Nude pics and movies or other private data. Who says that the information they gather is secure. It used to be and may still be that certain books at the libary where flaged and if you checked them out information would be sent to the FBI. What if the US Government Sepinas Google and makes certain information required to give them. I know that sounds crazzy but what if they say they want to stop kiddie porn and child abuductions, google wouldn't fight it. Then anything they find that is private is the governments for the keeping.
The targeted advetisements don't bother me. I used to have a service that did that. The problem was it didn't really work right. I also had a service that when you logged on you then logged into there service and you got money for active surfing. They also had there own shops and featured sites. If you bought stuff at there sites your money was worth more sometimes. But I don't think I would do that again unless there was more money in it or if it included places I shop at. But you do lose privacy and it would be verry easy for abuse and by the time you knew it would be to late.