It appears that there has recently been a leak of a new version of Google Talk.  This new version doesnt seem to have a lot of new features, which is probably why it isnt a public release.  The new version sports support for avatars and a little icon at the bottom that displays the number of unread emails you have.  This is kinda cool in itself, but I wish they would spend their time working on other things.

It seems I’m not the only one that thinks Google’s time could be better spent.  Some people at Festoon have released a plugin for gTalk that adds support for video chat.   And I’ve heard from over at Reseize.com that there is a company making a VOIP plugin called Talqer that allows you to make outgoing and incoming calls similar to Skype’s and Yahoo’s services, albiet at a cheaper rate.