Many months ago I made a conscience decision to use only Google Talk for instant messaging. By doing this, I really shut the door on several friends and family members that were tied to Yahoo! and AIM. It wasn't an easy decision, but I was really tired of having to keep track of multiple instant messaging services in an application dedicated to doing nothing other than hanging out on my desktop waiting for someone to send me a message. After all, Google Talk is mixed right into Gmail, so it's at my fingertips all the time!

Google has solved my little problem by including AIM in Gmail. Finally, I thought. I can enjoy the convenience of my Gmail + Google Talk interface with the added bonus of talking to all my AIM-only contacts! It was shortly after that that I realized that all the people on my AIM buddy list were already Google Talk users.

Oh well, it's still a cool feature.

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