Pidgin 2.6 adds Google Talk video and voice support

Pidgin has long been an easy way to use lots of different chat systems on your desktop. With its 2.6 release, Pidgin's finally catching up to the video, audio and file transfer offerings of Google Talk, Yahoo and others.

The big new feature in the 2.6 releases -- already at a bug-fixing 2.6.1 as this is written -- is video and voice chat support over XMPP, known primarily as the Jabber/Google Talk protocol. Unfortunately, that video and audio chat support isn't working on Windows at the moment (kind of a big target to miss, no?), but the Pidgin team says it's coming soon. In other areas, Pidgin improved its Yahoo file transfer powers, added rough support for theming, and made a whole bunch of other changes.

Pdigin's 2.6.1 release is available as a source download at the moment, but pre-compiled versions for Windows, Linux and Mac (if you're not in the Adium camp) should be rolling out soon. It's a free download. Get it at pidgin.im/ .

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