Unless you've been in hiding from most every type of media in the last couple of days, you probably know that Google has released it's own IM and Audio Chat service. However, the big news (for us, at least) is that it's based on Jabber, the XML-based open communications standard. In my first article on the FreeSex Network, I mentioned that Jabber would probably be the best platform to implement a free, open-source teledildonics service on, due to the open standards and cross-platform support. However, at the time that was written, there was no audio or video conferencing support for Jabber, which is one of the base requirements for a decent teledildonics network. Now that Google has picked up the project, they've already fulfilled the audio chat requirement, and are hinting that video chat will be available by the end of this beta. They also mentioned that while SSL is not currently possible directly through the service (there are SSL jabber relays available to fix this for the moment), they will be implementing secure messaging. So will Google enable the first open source, free, secure teledildonics network? We'll certainly be keeping an eye on Google Talk and its API, so expect updates as we think of ways to horribly pervert the service.