How to set up Google Talk on your Mac

So Google Talk is real. Check out Jordan's review of it over at DownloadSquad. You all know, I have a few problems with Google failing to release Mac compatible software, and I had doubts very similar to Jay's upon hearing about Google Talk tonight. There is no Mac client, but it does work in both iChat and Adium. I've had several convos with my Mac friends, but unfortunately, there seems to be some bugginess in the iChat / Adium to Windows client department. I want this to be cool and work really well. I hope Mac and Google come together to make this really shine and soon.

In any case, if you have a Gmail account and want to give it a shot, head on over to this post for the how to. The basic setup is: server: talk.google.com, username: youremail@gmail.com, and password: yourgmailpassword. The connection port should be 5222, but with SSL on, iChat only wants to allow 5223. To fix this, I went into my Airport Admin utility and then forwarded all private requests for 5223 through public 5222. Check it out.

UPDATE: You can audio chat over Google Talk with iChat too. Cool.