I noticed while actively using Gmail this morning, that I had apparently been “signed out” of Gmail and hence could not use Google Chat. This was especially odd as I had just viewed a message and didn’t notice the area until I hit reply and was working right next to that part of the page.
Now, this is both good and bad. One of my pet peeves about Gmail is that it assumes I want to use the web page to chat, and I can’t really turn it off. So if Chat thinks I’m signed out, that’s good. I’ll continue using Adium, my preferred client. However, I’m also not thrilled that it thinks I’m signed out. Does that mean that anybody else could get to my mail?
And while we’re at it, why have they been dropping sign-in for Google Notifier several times per day?
Trust. Along with trusting search results, trusting data security is critical. And it’s not accomplished by asking me where my father was born.
Actually, if you change your “view” at the bottom of the page to “standard” (by default it’s standard with chat), then you can disable chat for the webpage (but keep the logging, IIRC) and just use a chat client.
Why this option isn’t under the “Chat” tab in the “settings” is the real question; because even though I turned off chat a while ago, that’s the first place I looked to show that it could be done.