geek talk

Not that we need even more proof that Talk (dot google dot com) is built by geeks (in a good way, dammit), I came across this little feature.  Type something like this…

hello, that’s a *very* big world you have there.

…and it’s rendered like this…

hello, that’s a very big world you have there.

Yep – that’s limited wiki markup, in your chat client!  It would be great if that feature were implemented like text filtering plugins are in MT; you could build custom markup for chat sessions to enable  formatting, keyword shortcuts, URL builders, etc.  Or, of course, a filter that automatically translates everything into pig latin for conducting not-terribly-secure conversations.