Today we're launching a new version of Google Talk with fun personalization features: Pictures and Chat Themes.
Pictures. Now you can set your own picture and see your friends' pictures, right from your friends list. It's easy to use: simply click on your picture to select a new picture. In addition you can see the pictures in chat notifications, optional friend online notifications, and new Profile Cards that show up over your friends list. We think pictures are a big visual improvement to Google Talk, and we hope you like them as much as we do.
Chat Themes. Customize the look of your chat conversations by choosing from a number of built-in themes. Just select your theme from Settings->Appearances. One of the themes replicates the simple style, and some get quite fancy and include pictures of your friends.
Keeping Google Talk simple and easy to use is a high priority for us. Sometimes it's a tradeoff between adding a feature and keeping Google Talk easy to use, but we're happy when we can find the line that lets us do both.
Many members of the Google Talk team contributed to this release, some of whom will be posting to this blog over the coming days. Stay tuned!
Scott Ludwig
Software Engineer
