Chat with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and other contacts over Google Talk

When it was first introduced, Google Talkhad a lot of stiff competition in the instant messaging realm. Then Google integrated chat directly into Gmail, built a web-based version of Google Talk that's even better than their desktop version, and topped it off with chat logs baked directly into and searchable inside Gmail. As a result, Google Talk has claimed a whole lot of IM converts. If you're one of them, though, you probably still have a lot of contacts who use other services, like AIM, Yahoo, and even (gasp!) MSN. Today I'll show you how to chat with all of your instant messaging buddies—with all the benefits of Gmail and web integration—using Google Talk as a universal chat application.

To get started, go download the free, cross platform Jabber client Psi and install it. We're only going to be using Psi one time to set everything up, so uncheck the auto-start checkbox during Psi installation.

Set up Google Talk with Psi

When you're done, launch Psi. The first thing you need to do is set up your Gmail account (as you know your Google chat works through your Gmail address), so type in a descriptive name at the Add Account screen (Gchat will do) and click Add. Now you need to enter in all of the pertinent information on the Account tab of the setup.

Psi works with both regular old Gmail accounts and hosted Gmail accounts, so for the Jabber ID field, you want to enter your email address. If you use regular Gmail, that means you would enter your.name@gmail.com. In the Password field, enter your Gmail password.

Next click on the Connection tab and check every box under Advanced. That means "Use SSL encryption," "Ignore SSL warnings," "Allow Plaintext Login," "Send Keep-alive packets," and "Manually Specify Server Host/Port" should all be checked. When you tick the last box, the Host field becomes editable. Enter talk.google.com in this field. Make sure the port listed is 5223 (it should already be listed as such) and click Save.

Register your other IM services with a transport server

Now comes the magic part. Connect your Google Talk account with Psi by right-clicking the account name, then Status, and then Online. Now right-click the account name a second time and click Service Discovery. You need to find a Jabber transport server that will bridge the gap between your Google Talk and non-Gtalk chat applications. To find one, you can search a couple of different sites for open Jabber servers that offer transport functions:Open Jabber Servers or The XMPP Federation. (The second lets you search for keywords like "AIM Transport," which comes in handy.) The server I used for my set up is jaim.at.

Enter the server name into the Address field and click Browse. If all works well,* you should see a list of available transports (see screenshot above). To set up one of your IM accounts, just right-click the appropriate transport server (AIM, MSN, etc.) and select Register. Then just add your username and password, click the Register button, and voila—Psi will ask you to confirm all of your newly transported contacts in your Google Talk account. Once you do, they'll all automatically be available through your Google Talk account wherever you go.

After you've set up the transport server, you can also add a new buddy from another service from inside Google Talk using the server like an email address. Using the jaim.at transport server I used, for example, I could add a new AIM buddy from Google Talk by addingnew.buddy@aim.jaim.at.

Like I said above, one of the greatest benefits of connecting all of your chat accounts with your Gmail account is that your chats become instantly searchable inside Gmail. That means that if you know you had a conversation with someone and you want to check the details of what you've decided, but you can't remember if the conversation was over IM or email, you can search both places from one place.

Using a transport server does mean, however, that you're trusting your information to a third-party server, which isn't always the most fun to do. In the end, you'll have to weigh your options and decide whether or not the end justifies the means for you.