Empathy consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses Telepathy and Nokia’s Mission Control, and reuses Gossip’s UI. The main goal is to permit desktop integration by providing libempathy and libempathy-gtk libraries. libempathy-gtk is a set of powerful widgets that can be embeded into any GNOME application.This packet contains the empathy IM application and account manager.
Install Required packages

First you need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file using the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

add the one of the following lines

For Intrepid users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

For Hardy users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Save and Exit the file.

Now you need to update the source list using the following command

sudo apt-get update

Install the required packages using the following command

sudo apt-get install empathy telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control telepathy-stream-engine telepathy-butterfly python-msn

This will complete the installation.

Using Empathy

You can start Empathy from Applications –> Internet –> Empathy Instant Messenger

Configure your gmail account with the following settings

1. In Empathy, Edit –> Accounts gtalk0 is checked

2. For Gtalk account you have to give Login ID user-name@gmail.com

3. Server is: talk.google.com

4. Port is 5223, and

5. Use old ssl is checked