Google made an announcement today which I am thrilled about: The ability to make phone calls from your Gmail web page, which Google introduced earlier this year, will remain free throughout 2011 for U.S. users.
That’s right. You can make totally free phone calls from your totally free Gmail account. All you need is a (sometimes) totally free data connection. What’s also great about this feature is that you only need to install one plugin to start calling Aunt Matilda from your computer.
In my last Geeks to Peeps article, I started digging into the wonder that is Gmail, looking at the archiving and labels functions and how they help you organize and reference your email. This article continues the Gmail love, focusing on the built-in Chat functionality and how it brings multiple communication methods into your Gmail account.
We live in a world where chat is as much a part of our online life as email is. It only makes sense, then, that Google has added their own chat application into Gmail as well as a standalone client. The official application is Google Talk and can be downloaded here. The application also serves as a notifier when you receive new email, so you don’t have to keep your web browser open all of the time. My focus for this article, however, is on the embedded chat function in Gmail.