I’ve been using Google Voice since it was owned by Grand Central. It is a great platform for managing free calls, SMS, and contacts with intelligence. Now Google Voice lets you port your mobile number from your carrier to Google as well. This way, your voicemail is accessible from the cloud. By allowing Google Voice to manage my voicemail, it solves my issue with AT&T which prevents me from receiving voicemail notifications. Once you receive a voicemail, you can be alerted a number of ways by transcribed email or SMS text messages.
Google Voice can let you have a single phone number that automatically rings to your mobile, work, home and other phones based on rules and settings. For example, calls from your kids will ring all numbers while office related contacts only ring your work number.
The process to move your carrier number to Google Voice requires a few steps. However, it is very worth it in the end.
Google Wave has been making headlines in the tech world. Not many people know this since not everyone received the official invite yet but it already works in the iPhone. It looks quite fantastic. You can simply go to wave.google.com in mobile Safari on your iPhone and wil be prompted that you are using a browser not supported during the preview, however, once you click through, it actually works well.
You can save a bookmark on your Home screen and it creates a little icon like other Web pages on the iPhone. However, Google Wave is a bit different. Once you launch it it removes the Safari wrapper which allows you to nagivate to another page or search the Web. It actually looks like a regular native iPhone app.
The screen shot on the right is what Google Wave looks like on the iPhone launched from the Home screen bookmark. The screen shot at the bottom is what it looks like from within Safari.
Google’s Android operating system for mobile phones will be available on the Verizon Wireless network under an agreement the companies announced Tuesday.
Verizon states that Android-based handsets will becoming in the next few weeks. Android is Google’s operating system for mobile phones. The new Android-based devices will come loaded with mobile apps developed by Google, Verizon, and third parties.
Even if this competes with the tremendously popular iPhone, we believe as long as there are innovative devices coming out, it will force companies to improve for the sake of consumers.
The telecom industry was stale for so long. Remember when the Motorola RAZR came out? It looked slick at first, but there weren’t many features. They also kept coming out with many different versions with little varied features confusing the market. Apple’s iPhone was a game changer and forced telecom to make better phones and provide richer services.
Dropbox is an easy to use online file storage that syncs your files across all your computers. I installed it recently and must say it is very intuitive, easy, and fast! You simply go to their website, create and account, and then install on your computer (both Windows and Mac compatible). You can then select your drop box folder to by synced. Files or folders that are in your Dropbox folder are then synchronized online. The performance is great. When you make a change, Dropbox sends the “delta” only to the server thus making the change very quickly. You can also access your files through the website.
The free version begins with 2 Gig of storage space with an additional 1 Gig by referring friends. There is also premium paid version which offers much more.
Dropbox recently released an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. This new iPhone app will let you get access to all your Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your ‘Favorites’, they’ll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud. This is great for people who complain that the iPhone does not offer local file storage. Dropbox offers this and more with automatic sync with their cloud!
Dropbox can also let you share files and folders to anyone in the cloud. The iPhone app also lets you upload pictures and video (with iPhone 3GS).
In just a few days, Dropbox reached over 2 million users. Impressive.
Google recently released their new web-based collaboration tool called Wave to developers, volunteers and select Google Apps members. The shortest way to describe Google Wave is real-time Gmail on steroids. Wave is the entire Google Product while a wave (lower case) is an individual message or document. Google is initially targeting students, colleges, and collaborative teams to test out this new paradigm of communication.
A wave can include a message with rich content (images, YouTube video, links, maps) and can be shared with other users. There is also a video playback feature that shows a new member coming into the wave the history of the changes.
A wave can also be embedded on another site such as a blog. Currently, there are still bugs to be worked out but this does seem to be a promising step forward for Google to compete with Facebook, Twitter and other crowd sourcing social networks.
Google Wave Header
Here is the Google Wave 3 Panes: Navigation, List, Rich Content.
Google Wave Default View
A wave with rich content
Google Wave Rich Content
Google Wave is similar to Gmail with search features, tagging, file uploads, and even folders. The rich web interface is completely drag and drop.
You can now use Google Docs to perform OCR image-to-text conversions when you upload high-resolution files. It is a nice newly added feature from Google (and of course it is free)
For 3rd party webapps or services that uses Google Docs, they can use this URL parameter to accept JPG, PNG, and GIF files for conversions. Keep in mind this is still in beta.
Tell us what you think of Google Docs OCR performance. Was it good for you?
AT&T’s recently announced A-List plans on September 20, 2009. This calling feature lets customers talk with up to five people on any network for free, including landlines. The service is very similar to T-Mobile myFaves, which provides free and unlimited calling to customers’ five favorite people. The A-List feature is available on individual Nation plans that cost $59.99 or more. FamilyTalk customers with plans costing $89.99 or more can choose up to 10 people to talk with free of charge.
Want even more free calls beyond what AT&T offers? Add your Google Voice number to your A-list so now you can talk to anyone in North America without using your minutes. Google Voice acts like a conference call with the number you want to talk to (incoming or outgoing). The call with Google Voice is free which connects you to the number you want to talk to. When someone outside your network calls your Google Voice number, your Google Voice then redirects that call to you. So now the conversation is between your AT&T number and Google Voice. If you want to make a call outside your network, call your own Google number and sign into the Google voicemail system, you’ll have the option to place a call. Just press 2 and enter the number. You can also visit Google Voice mobile on your phone.
So what are you waiting for? Log into www.att.com/alist now and add your out of network numbers for free unlimited calls.
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