Gmail launches new service

Gmail launched today a new service as the latest experiment in the Google Labs playground, Cnet.news reported.

Google Talk Guru offers Gmail subscribers chat session through which they can ask certain questions and receive responses from an automated robot set up on the back end.

For now, the application can handle only certain types of questions from among a limited number of categories, such as weather, sports scores, math equations, definitions, and translations. But like other Google Labs apps, it's something to try out and could eventually develop into something bigger and better.

To use Talk Guru, subscribers need a chat client that supports Google Talk. They then have to invite themselves to chat with the guru. In return, They'll receive the invite in their Google Talk contacts list, which you have to accept to start chatting. Following the list of  acceptable categories, you then type a question or query to see if the robot can come up with the right response.