These past few days, I've been experimenting with Google Talk (GTalk) by integrating my buddies I have on Yahoo! Messenger (YM) and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). This all started when GMail let their users chat with their AIM buddies within GMail. This way, all chats are saved in the Chats folder of GMail. AND saving or having archives of conversations can now be more searchable. So I found this site by searching "google talk aim" on Google and it clearly outlined what needs to be done in order to integrate GTalk with other Instant Messengers (IMs). First is to download and install a Jabber client that can discover other Jabber servers besides GMail. I decided to try out Psi since it was the one used by the tutorial. It's okay as far as Jabber clients go, and I might use it as a replacement for GTalk. At least until the aesthetics are improved, which would be later than sooner. Chatting in Psi has a mIRC feel to it since it encloses your nickname in < and > brackets. So after downloading and installing Psi, I then added my GMail account. gmail.com is a Jabber server by itself and doesn't need extra configuration steps. All I had to do was input my Google username and password. Now comes the tricky part. Here's a tip you should do before trying to add YM or AIM buddies: "enable auto-authorize" in the Options for Psi. I had to learn the hard way. You'll see what I mean if you tried to do it without enabling the said option. So after enabling the "auto-authorize" option, the next thing to do is to look for a Jabber server that has a Yahoo and an AIM transport service. This means that YM and AIM (and MSN) uses Jabber servers also to connect users to their service. A list of Jabber Servers can be found here. So you take your pick at a server and hope it carries both or all transports, which is highly unlikely. I was successful with net2max.com as the jabber server for YM. Double-clicking on the transport would ask for a username and password. This is the only time I entered my username and password for YM (or AIM). After this, Psi registers the service and collects all your buddies, which prompts you with hundreds of notification messages that typically says that users fetched by Psi from YM (for example) has been authorized to communicate with your GTalk. Ideally, if you log off or quit Psi and login to GTalk, your YM (or AIM) buddies will be shown together with your GTalk buddies. And it should show the correct status and status message of your buddies. Recently have I found out that if you exited out of Google Desktop and left your GTalk connected, your YM buddies will be shown as offline and you won't be able to send or receive any messages. So to resolve this situation of "offline" buddies, I then logged in to Psi and reconnected the transport, and in this case, I only noticed it in YM. After logging in to Psi and making sure the transport is connected, I then re-enabled Google Desktop then proceeded to quit Psi before I re-log in back to GTalk. So far, it's sticking. There are no issues whatsoever with the service and I use just one Google username and password to login to GTalk and chat with my YM and AIM buddies. It's like having OpenID for chat. This time, though, I'm using Google Talk Labs Edition (GTalk LE) to test-drive the new application and see if it would accommodate the YM buddies I have added in Psi. It's more pleasing to the eyes and have been easy to use. The only pet peeve I have with this edition is the sign out feature, which is not available on the application itself but rather on the system tray icon's context menu. Although the process was a bit complicated, this is the best way to maximize the potential of GTalk and make it actually talk with other IM services. Integration is clearly the way to go. Hopefully, the big companies are paying attention.