What drives "presence" in Contacts?

[badger98]

I have a few contacts with gmail addresses in my Contacts list. I've seen a "presence" icon next to some of them, but something I've done to these contacts has removed that icon. I've tried adding a new contact with just the gmail address to see if it comes back, but it does not. Any ideas as to what causes this icon to appear (or disappear)?

 

[ShowTime]

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to since I don't have gmail addresses added for any of my contacts. But my guess would be they are indicators of that contact being logged in/online with Gmail? Much the same way as when you log in to Gmail on a PC and can see which of your contacts are online/available to talk. And the reason they aren't there any more is because those contacts aren't logged in at the times you've checked. But again, I'm not sure about this.

 

[badger98]

To be clear, I'm wondering what allows the presence icon to appear. The icon is no longer showing up in the contacts list, though they show "online" when I go to Google Talk.

 

[stearic]

You might be logged out of gtalk and that's what's not allowing them to show up, i'll test this quick and get back.

Edit: Just checked, when i'm logged out of Gtalk on my phone those icons do not show up, but when logged in they do. That's what is causing them to show and not show up.

 

[ShowTime]

To be clear, I'm wondering what allows the presence icon to appear. The icon is no longer showing up in the contacts list, though they show "online" when I go to Google Talk.

Is Google Talk the same thing as the chat feature within Gmail? I thought they were different. I don't use either one. But what I was talking about was when you log in to your Gmail on a PC and there is the "chat" feature (functions like IM) of people you can talk to if they are also logged in to their Gmail (thus they could be online with Google Talk, but not currently logged in to their Gmail account and available to chat...). Again, I don't use any of these features so I may be way out in left field here.

 

[badger98]

I think you're on to something, stearic. I do see the presence now that I've launched GTalk again. Strangely, though, I was seeing presence for contacts that simply had a gmail address before, but now it seems to only show up if I put their gmail address in the "IM" field in the contact. Still not 100% sure how this works.

 

[jbsangel]

Is Google Talk the same thing as the chat feature within Gmail? I thought they were different. I don't use either one. But what I was talking about was when you log in to your Gmail on a PC and there is the "chat" feature (functions like IM) of people you can talk to if they are also logged in to their Gmail (thus they could be online with Google Talk, but not currently logged in to their Gmail account and available to chat...). Again, I don't use any of these features so I may be way out in left field here.

The chat feature within gmail is just logging you into google talk basically. They are the same, just different ways of accessing them. The Talk program in Android is the same chat client as GoogleTalk that you can install on a PC is the same as the chat client in gmail that you can sign into. If someone shows up with the green dot in your contact list it means they are online and logged in to google talk using some method be it google talk, google chat, or even some other app like i dunno trillian or something.

and yes on phone, if you are signed into google talk then when you scroll through your contacts it will show the colored dots indicating their status.