Pidgin to increase productivity
I use GTalk a lot over at Iformis We use it for text talk and voice chat all the time. The only problem with it is that it is pretty tightly coupled with Gmail.
Now a lot of people are saying that you should stop checking your email as much and only look at it twice per day.
Something about endorphins released when you send an email causing problems with the completions of your other tasks. As you are already forfilled from the email postage.
Also, interruptions are bad etc etc there are loads of other benefits just read the links above.
Anyway, as google talk keeps telling me how many emails I have waiting (you can turn off the notifications but not the number unread) this is a problem for me keeping checking email.
Enter pidgin the program formerly known as Gaim. It has jabber integration functionality which means that it works on the google talk network! Hurray no more email notifications, we can now all live a more productive, less interrupted life.