I’ve been using Googles Gtalk instant messenger client for a while now, along side my usual MSN messenger. When I initially installed it my first thought was “where the hell are all the features?!?!”, but a couple months down the track I’m now thinking thank god nobody can NUDGE me… or send me a WINK… or well… ANNOY ME really!

I mean ask yourself, what do you really use an IM client for? Sending “Instant” messages perhaps?? Well Gtalk does that just fine. There are a number of cool little features that make it incredibly easy to work with such as the ability to dock all your conversation windows together in one “Stack” zipping open only the active conversation but managing the as a group, or just minimising a chat window to display ony its header.

No, it doesn’t have features like file transfer, video messaging, winks and nudges or even pretty emoticons, but when I really think about it, I just don’t need all that crap! It’s a small install, uses far less system resources than clients like MSN, Yahoo and ICQ and it integrates nicely with my Gmail. I’ve heard a fair bit of negative press lately and I just want to say I don’t agree… we’ve just been suckered into thinking that more is better and you think by now we would KNOW better.

I'm way behind on this one I'm sure, but on my regular train ride into work this morning, I was listening to an interview with Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.com on The Chris Pirillo Show (from way back in October… like I said, WAY behind). TechCrunch.com is not only an exceptionally well designed blog (in Firefox at least!), with clean lines, nice colour ways and a very clear navigation hierachy, I have to say it is also a great source of information and reviews on web 2.0 technology. I will definately be adding this one to my SauceReader.