LogIt!

Just found out that Picasa Web will not show you a nice mini map with album and photo locations if it thinks that your language preference is not English (US). If you're logged in with your google account, you should go to picasaweb settings and choose English (United States) as you language preference. If you are not logged in, ensure that in your browser's language preferences "en-us" is on top of the language list. Other languages may do the job too but English (US) is known to work.
After you've made the changes you should see a map of album locations in my photo album home page.

Labels: geotag, google, map, photo, picasa

It's been my little dream since I started using gmail as my main email system. I do not need any software and any specific setup to fully access all my email accounts. Moreover, there is even a nice chat integrated right into web client - GTalk. Apparently you can download and use any jabber compatible IM software to use GTalk for chat. However there is even more. I am not 100% confident in terms used but essentially jabber clients and servers support "service discovery": you supply a third party server name, client discovers additional services available on this node and lets you use them. Service subscription is saved on the server so that no matter what jabber client you use they will be available.
Among these service nodes there are "transport" nodes, like for example jabber.org.by, that provide you with gateways to other IM systems such as ICQ and MSN.
So now we are getting closer to the main point. In order to use ICQ and MSN via GTalk web interface or standalone program, do the following:

1. Download and install a good jabber client. I used http://gajim.org/.
2. Run it, connect to GTalk server by supplying your gmail username/password and gmail.com as the jabber server.
3. Discover services of jabber.org.by, in gajim it is done by selecting Action->Discover services, entering jabber.org.by and clicking Go. You may find and use any other transport server but I've been told that this one is one of the most stable ones.
   
4. Subscribe to MSN and ICQ services supplying your login credentials when asked.
   
5. Quit jabber client.

That's it - now login to gmail/gtalk and enjoy chatting with your ICQ and MSN contacts! They are even added to your gmail address book as for example 12345678@icq.jabber.org.by which corresponds to an ICQ user with UIN 12345678.
Note: gmail web interface will display a contact chat invitation for each of your ICQ/MSN contacts. Just ignore that - the dialog will disappear by itself.

Many thanks to Rinat and svyatogor for opening my eyes!

Labels: google, gtalk, im, jabber, messaging