PXylem

Once a trusted confidante of him and the next moment the most despised friend and a colleague – you will be asking how it has happened? All occurred not within a month or in years, but within a few hours, say within a few minutes.

How can it be possible? It takes months and years plus innumerable trial and errors after which a matrix of relationship is built, but call it fortunate or unfortunate, someone pricks into your relationship balloon, and in no time it collapses with a fragmented soul.

Thanks to Google talk! The incident has occurred with one of my best friend. It has broken his blind belief on friends (who come online and chat) that he used have before. Now, after the incident the fun looking Gtalk terrorizes him. And I find he is not the same person with whom I used to chat nonchalantly. He even doubts on me.

He was not a regular chatter in the world of chatting. The type of chatting he usually used to do was basically one-to-one and personalized to his ex-colleagues, relatives, school friends and peers. And this is what Gtalk or any other interactive platforms are all about.

Few days back, I got online with one of my female colleague from my previous job. It was surprising and ironical at the same time since when we were both working we hardly used to talk, forget chatting. She had a similar story to tell – how chatting has virtually ruined her life.

After continuing two or three lines of chatting, she came to her real self and asked me my opinion about chatting. To keep her happy I wrote ‘awry’. The next sentence from her was asking me to tell the meaning of the word. I told the purpose for which chatting was conceptualized and what it does actually mean. I wrote “away from the correct or expected course” is what chatting is all about.

Well, she didn’t disclose what sort of traumatic experience that she had underwent. But while she was logging out I got the message that she will tell me when we meet. I myself don’t know when we will meet again.

Now coming to my friend’s story. He blurts out everything and spilled it in my mind. Leaving me to ponder hard, very hard.

He told me while answering the simple looking question from her female colleague has landed him to the eyesore of his previous boss. The cordial relationship that he used to have with him has been jeopardized. Well, my friend has left the earlier job under which he used to work.

He says the mistake that he did was only to please his ex-colleague though momentarily. And the question that was asked to him, he adds was premeditated, preplanned to trap him. Well, there is no point in repenting when he had let the cat out of the bag.

With these two real stories that had happened in the life of my friend I have also got bit serious, concerned and cautious while using Gmail coming with Google chat. Since I do chat with my friends, peers and relatives.

In the search to plug such incidents happening with me and with anybody, I took a frantic search, well again in the Google, which has ruined my friend. I found how oblivious we are with the use of gmail and with its tools. We do mail, chat in gmail. But we are limited to its use only and not more than that.

I found Google has an option “to make off the record” any chat you are involved with. By doing so, chats that have been taken off the record aren't stored in your Gmail chat history, or in the Gmail chat history of your contact.

Here is the way to take a chat off the record:

**Click the down arrow at the top-right corner of the chat window.
**Select Go off the record.

To Know More About Go off the record option.
: click