Gmail Chat smiley

Let's see, there's the Unix talk/write, then MIT's zephyr (which I still think is top notch simple/clean UI), along comes ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, AOL IM, Triton, MSN, Jabber, Skype, etc... then Google Talk, and now Gmail Chat ...

I'd have to say that I transitioned from zephyr to ICQ for a little while before settling down with Yahoo Messenger. For some reason I just like YM better than AIM, I like the UI, the graphics, the modes, and most of all, they had archiving long before AIM. Oh, let's not forget that at that time everything I had was integrated into Yahoo something (mail, calendar, MyYahoo, finances, movie listings, yp)...

to be honest, I wouldn't reinvest all that time into re-establish Google Talk, but the Gmail Chat embedded is a different story. It does not require you to open up another application, it does not take up precious "real estate" on your screen, and it directly uses people's gmail address as recipients... how convenient. A jetset friend of mine told me recently about the smiley faces list, but another great feature to incorporate is mabye a ring if someone just texted you?

umm.. there are quite a few other sugguestions on the list...