FWIW, I got my gmail account without an invite - signed up through their cellphone deal.

- Dennis Brothers

I wish they would do that over here in Ottawa.

I have been using my 770 to plot out all the free wifi around. Nearly all Futureshops and BestBuys have free wifi. The Hotspot consortium ($30 a month) chased away most of the free wifi coffeeshops but there are a few Bridgeheads that have them around yet and some independents that will give you an hour or so with a purchase.

I have not found any good unlimited dataplans from cell providers up here. The only one that I found mandated that you use a Crackberry and it was *expensive*.

.

I was doing some experimentation while talking to myself on another system (sad, I know). It seems that the 770 gtalk has some pretty agressive background noise suppression and echo cancellation. So I would imagine that in an environment with inconsistent background noise, things would get rather choppy when the squelch kicks in. I also found that the noise suppression takes quite a while to recover after a big spike in the microphone input like a tap on the case or clapping. Best results seem to be had when talking at a consistant volume with a background noise at a steady level and not talking when the other speaker is talking.

I found the external speaker volume output a bit low. I had to crank up the master volume and application volume right up to hear ok. I would imagine that it would be nearly useless in some street noise unless you had a headset.

Anyone try out a bluetooth headset yet?

Just Chat->Enter chatroom AFAICT.
I would propose that people join the "770" chatroom directly. Don't bother searching for it as I suspect that that feature is broken as I get all the chatrooms listed as zero people too.

for those of us using jabber, what is the address of the chatroom? to see, go to Chat / Room Settings / Room Addresd

More gtalk experience
 

Just tried calling the two folks I talked to earlier, switching from WIFI through my cable modem to DUN through my cellphone (115 Kbps). Connected to both, but voice communication was essentially unreadable.

This was unexpected - I've had previous experience with VOIP through cellphone. I'm a state RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service) operator in MA. We had a hurricane drill in MA last week, and internet was down in the state emergency operations center. We communicate with NWS/SkyWarn using a system called EchoLink, which is a hybrid ham radio/VOIP system. I ran EchoLink on my laptop, bluetoothed to my cellphone, and it worked as well as a broadband connection - perfectly clear copy, no gaps in transmission.

The fact that gtalk doesn't seem to work in the same circumstances is somewhat disturbing - I had hoped this was the <hyperbole> ultimate </hyperbole> communication solution - voice communication anywhere, even outside the range of WIFI. Guess not.

- Dennis Brothers

Do I just create a jabber account on the 770 or do I have to get a pc client first and do it?...cause my jabber connection still isn't working, but my google one finally did.

Oh and everyone go to "770" chat room :)