Advantages:

The main advantages of XMPP is based on decentralization, its open standards, security and flexibility. As metioned one of the foremost advantages of using XMPP is that it is decentralized. this allows anyone to run their own XMPP server without the need of a central master server. This is very much similar to email. XMPP falls under open standards and it is formalized. Specifications have been published and the technology is not tied up with any single vendor which removes the need to pay any royalities. THe XMPP protocol has been used for a long time and companies like GOOGle has been supporting which ensures the development of libraries for clients, servers and other components. The servers running XMPP may be separated frfom public networks and it is secure as as security like SASLand TLS has been built into it. Channel encryption is supported by ensuring the availability of digital certificates. Another important feature that greatly enhances the desirabilty of XMPP is that it is flexible which implies customised functions can be built into it. This finds application in games, collaboration tools, file sharing and other features.

Disadvantages:

Large data overhead, limited  scope to scability and abscence of binary data are cited as the drawbacks of XMPP. Unmodified binary data cannot be delivered since XMPP is encoded as one long XML document.

However the advantages of XMPP greatly outweighs the drawbacks of XMPP.

Here is a simple architecture of XMPP and its working.

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One of the good feature in gmail chat that you may miss will be SMS chat. Frankly speaking I had read an article sometime back in google blog but I have noticed the feature yesterday only. The feature can be enabled from google Lab tab in settings window of gmail. This feature is currently live in US only. After enabling it in the Lab tab follow the steps below.

1. Enter your contact’s name in the ‘Search or invite friends’ box in Chat, and select Send SMS from the box of options that appears to the right of your contact’s name. Or, if you already have a Chat window open for this contact, just click Video & more, and select Send SMS.
2. In the dialog box, enter a phone number in the ‘Send SMS messages to this number’ field. For now, this feature works only on United States phone numbers. If you’re outside the US, you can still use it, but you won’t see the SMS option in Chat until you enable it manually in the Chat settings page.
3. Click Save.
4. A Chat window appears. Just type your message as you would normally. When you hit Enter, the message will be sent to the phone number you entered.

If the recipient respond to that chat message it will be displayed like normal chat. Moreover it will be logged in chat history but the offrecord will not work with this as it is using SMS as the mechanism for chatting.

Another important feature is that every user will get a virtual phone number for sending the reply back.

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If you are using gmail browser chat sometime while switching browser tab you might miss some of the IM alert. Sometime the gmail doesn’t produce an alert. The solution for this problem is using Gmail Chat Alert 0.3.0.

By using this plugin you can even add your own audio file for as alert tone.

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Lots of people misuse invisible feature inorder to even avoid individuals. I wrote an article about yahoo invisible hack some time back which created lots of response among my readers. This time I am going to explain about gmail invisible bug that can be exploited from “off the record feature“. Below are the steps involved, but there are some limitation.

Step 1. 

Set the target user as off the record while he/she is online. This can be done by simply clicking on the option in the chat window. 

Step 2. 

Try sending an IM when he/she is invisible or offline. 

If he/she is invisible he/she will receive message. If he/she is offline you will receive an error “did not receive your chat”.

This hack will only work if you mark the target user as off record when he/she is online. It is a limitation.

How does it work?

When the chat is off the record, it will no longer stored in the gmail account. 

When you send IM to an invisible / offline user it will be delivered by default. At the receiving end the IM will receive as a pop in form of chat window if the user is invisible. If the user is offline it will receive as an email in the inbox. 

The main problem with this hack is if the target user is using another email client or desktop version.

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Today I logged in my gmail, my chat list appeared as blank with green icons showing some of buddies are online.

Recently one of my friend got some gmail error showing undefined gmail. I don’t know why gmail applications are showing these kind of errors. I restarted my browser and logged in. The application works well. May be because of some plugins installed in my browser. Last time when undefined gmail problem occurred it was the grease monkey script created the problem.

I guess gmail team need to do some more browser compatibility test with different plugin installed before releasing their new versions.

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Today some of friends experienced some stability issues with gmail. All most all function are showing us undefined. All members in the chat list appeared as undefined. When I tried to IM my friend the chat is not received to my friend instead an yellow color displayed there. The main problem experienced was he can’t send email to anyone. An email service without mail sending facility what anomaly?

Gmail chat list.

Gmail mail composing window.

I guess gmail in newer version is not much stable as before. A lot of bugs are there with the newer version of gmail. Team gmail will fix the bugs as soon as they can else it will adversely affect the popularity of gmail. The yahoo mail new version is pretty fast now a days than before. Wake up gmail team fix the problem or revert the solution to some stable version for the time being.

Resolutions.

1) Switching your gmail to older version.

2) Disable greasemonkey script called Gmail Conversation Preview. (Thanks Matt, Kenly, Patric and everyone those who found the a resolution)

3) Use different Browser.

4) Disable Better gmail.

Alternative solution is to use some other mail service for some time , by the time Team gmail will fix it.

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Gmail web chat is the coolest chatting application I have ever seen. But I had some bad experience while using google web chat. The google web chat shows that status of the online user by displaying the name. In my messenger list I had more than one person with same name. Since it shows name in the chat list I misunderstood some person and talked about the other person.

But gmail recently released a feature called “Pictures in gmail chat”. This feature solves my problem. If this feature is enabled, along with name picture also get displayed in the conversation.

How to enable picture in gmail chat?

As I mentioned that it is enabled as Lab feature. Click on the Setting link on the top right corner of your mailbox. On the setting window click on the Lab tab. On the Lab tab select the Enable radio button labeled Pictures in chat and save the setting.

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All of us need to flag some of the important emails, thats why email clients provide the facility for flagging or starring. But what will do if we need to prioritizes the starred emails?

Team gmail recently enabled a feature called superstars, which provide us facility to add priority by assigning different labels accordingly upon our priority. There are 12 icon for assigning priorities. It is enabled as a Lab feature.

How to enable superstars?

As I mentioned that it is enabled as Lab feature. Click on the Setting link on the top right corner of your mailbox. On the setting window click on the Lab tab. On the Lab tab select the Enable radio button labeled Superstars and save the setting.

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It released some times back but I saw it today. I was wondering why I use google chat gadget for group chat. I feel really ashamed about me. Anyways let me explain how to start a group chat using gmail web chat. Click the option menu available when chatting.

The gmail group chat conversation started. Now you invite individuals for group chat.

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