Google Talk went live yesterday. It’s their new IM “service” – there’s a bunch of interesting aims for it, though. Check out their page Developer Info page that goes into depth about Google Talk and Open Communications – the jist of it is that they want to contribute to an IM network that uses the same protocol among different users, but allows users to choose what client and which specific service provider they use.

There are a bunch of things hidden in Google Talk, as well. Viewing the “About” box reveals a code that, when decoded, tells you to “play wumpus game”. Apparently yesterday you could invite [email protected] to be your contact, and you would be treated to an IM bot version of Hunt the Wumpus. Unfortunately, it appears to have been disabled today.

I also stumbled upon a keyboard shortcut. Hitting the Windows key and the Escape key (WIN + ESC) at the same time opens the contact list window and puts the cursor inside the “Search all contacts” box. Alt+F4 can then be used to close the window (in reality, it minimizes the window to the tray).

I found it kind of annoying that there’s this undocumented shortcut key – it would be pretty handy to just know this without having to accidentally discover it. Picasa is the same way… so many undocumented features!

Anyhoo, hopefully some people out there will find this trick useful.