Dave's Blog

I've alway been a fan of Google from redefining search, the way they revolutionised webmail with Gmail, to Google maps and Google earth. So I was one of the people deeply exited when Google launched Gtalk based on the Jabber/XMPP protocol - rather than re-inventing the wheel used a well established open protocol, rather than a gaed community they created one that could interact with anyone th had a Jabber server. 

Now comes the disapointment - last Friday it seems Google's chat servers stoped talking to other chat server. The causes are not clear - our servers are talking to theirs theirs, but theirs are mute , refusing to talk back.  The problem has been discussed on the Gtalk-open forum, but it appears despite herding people that way on their support forums no one from Google actualy reads the list. As a system administrator I consider it a basic professional courtesey to inform other administrators that their systems appear not to be working. So after working through several pages of useless help information about the Gtalk client I finaly managed to submit a problem to Google and got the obligatory automated response [ref 240328311]. Four days later i actually got a response, problem was it completly missidentified the problem as a google apps problem, since then nothing. Well Google this is not the way to make friends and influence people!

While I'm gripping about commercial chat providers (IM/MSN/yahoo) let me vent my current peeve - most of these service will only allow you to login from one location, a policy that probably made sence in the early 90's, but in todays world just doesn't work. Microsoft why should I get errors when I switch my Xbox on because my computer is on at the same time? Get with the program - XMPPas a protocol has allowed people to log in from mulitiple locations for some time ...