It’s been a long time, and there’s been no new features added to one of favorite, and modest instant messengers, Google Talk. If you can’t wait for the Google Talk team to update their product and need more features desperately, there are a number of third party GTalk add-ons you can use. Here are a few of them:

gAlwaysIdle

At the time of writing, there’s nothing like ‘invisible mode’ on Gtalk that can keep the annoyers at bay. But most people desperately need it. Here’s where gAlwaysIdle comes in.

Download it , install it and from then on you can control your Google Talk idle status.

Use the ‘Always Idle’ mode to keep your status idle, so that your status appears away even though you’re really online. ‘Never Idle’ mode works the other way, and will never put you on idle status – even when you’re away.

GPlus

GPlus is another third party addon for Google Talk. You can spicy tools to your minimalistic instant messenger with this little tool.

GPlus can spice up your chats by replacing smiley codes with graphical emoticons, and also play ‘Emotisounds’ to express what you’re feeling. GPlus can also log your chat conversations in HTML format. (via)

Extended Talk

Using Extended Talk, you can add a lot of very useful stuff to Google Talk. For instance, you can create shortcuts for frequently used phrases, so that you can save time by not typing them entirely. You can also put a shortcut on your desktop that instantly starts a conversation with the friend specified when activated.

Other features include: make your chat window transparent, close all active windows at once, text commands (/signout), underline support, dynamic status changer, file transfers, smileys, and more.