Google Voice Update

Back in the original Google Voice review, I had mentioned that Google Voice was one of those Google projects that is eternally in Beta. Well, it seems that Google disagreed with me on that point. On Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010, Google announced on the Google Voice Blog, that Google Voice was coming out of Beta and is now available for new subscribers in the United States without the need for an invite!

Yup, those pesky and elusive Google Voice invites are now a thing of the past.  If you've been waiting for one, you need wait no more, just go and sign up for your new Google Voice account. It will give you something to do while syncing your new iPhone with your computer.  Or updating your old one to iOS 4.  Or just trying to avoid another iPhone story...

Google Voice

As a counter point to the earlier review of the iPhone, this week we’re looking at something you can’t get on the iPhone: Google Voice.

A while ago, there used to be a service called Grand Central.  This was bought out by Google and re-named Google Voice.  And then Google started adding new capabilities to it.  GV is another of Google’s projects that is eternally in beta.  And like many of the others, if you can get in, it is pretty darn useful.  Right now, Google Voice is invitation only, which means that you need to find someone with a Google Voice number and ask them to send you an invite.  If you can’t find anyone, or your friends have all run out of invites, you can also go to https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ and ask Google if they’d be nice enough to send you an invite.  And if you’re not sure if you want one or not, you can look at the list of features at http://www.google.com/voice.  The price, however, is right: Google Voice is free, unless you use it for international calls. And even then there are considerable savings, depending on where you are calling and for how long.

When you sign up for Google Voice, you tell GV what one of your phone numbers is, and GV will either take over that number, or will assign you a new Google Voice phone number.  Using your existing number is convenient if you don’t want to have to give a new phone number to your contacts, but it can cause some problems.  So it may be easier to manage by just getting a new Google Voice number.  When someone calls your GV number, their call gets forwarded to your phone.  At that level, it seems a little useless.  But these days, most people have more than one phone.  You have your home number, your cell phone, your work number.  Pull all of these numbers into GV, and when someone calls your GV number, ALL of your phones ring.  The call gets routed to the phone you actually pick up on and you conduct your conversation normally.  And you can build rules in GV to control which phones get called, so your home phone won't ring when you're at work, and your work phone won't ring during the weekend. And so no phones will ring between midnight and 8 AM.  Whatever works for you.  Or if you just want to "hold all calls", turn on the Do Not Disturb feature, either for a set period of minutes, hours, or days, or just until you turn it off again.

So what happens to the call if you don't pick up?  Google Voice also gives you voice-mail on your GV number.  You can listen to the voice mail on your web site, or you can give GV an e-mail address and GV will attempt transcribe the audio message into text and e-mail the text to you.  The transcription is completely automated.  It's not perfect, but you can pretty much get the idea.  It even shades the words in the transcript to show you how confident the software is with the transcription.

You can text for free with GV, and you can have incoming text messages forwarded to your cell phone, although normal texting rates on your cell still apply.  This can sometimes be confusing to the people you are texting with.  GV has settings that will allow you to appear to text with your regular cell number, or with your GV number.  So do some thinking about your texting habits before you start using Google Voice to text, or your friends may think you’ve got two different phones that you’re texting them with.

Google voice is free in the US, and provides free long distance in the US, and special rates for overseas calls.  You can sign up for GV without paying a cent, or giving a credit card number. They even give you a ten cent credit when you sign up, even if you never give them any kind of payment information.  But it won’t let you make international calls unless you do arrange for payment.

Coolest of all, you can create groups and build rules based on the groups.  That way your folks can't call you at work, but your business associates can.  Someone bothering you? Block their number altogether.  Send calls from your creditors straight to voice-mail, but let your close friends ring on through.  The tools give you a lot of control. And even if you've built rules for groups, you can override them by putting special rules on an individual.  You can even record multiple voice mail messages so that the outgoing message changes depending on who is calling.

And since you can block anybody, and have voice mail, your GV number is safe to publish on the internet.  Or put a GV widget on your website so someone can click it and have GV call them and you. Just like the one I just added to the Right sidebar. Care to give me feedback on this or any other part of The Nifty Tech Blog? Just click the widget and enter your phone number. GV will call you and connect you to my voice mail.

If you’re tired of giving out all of your numbers to people, or you need to give someone a contact number, but don't really want them to have your real phone number, just give them your GV number. Do you need someone to call you at a specific time, but don't know where you will be? Just give out your Google Voice number and you're done. If someone calls you that isn't in your address book, GV automatically screens the call. You pick up, hear their name, and GV gives you a menu of options that lets you accept the call, or send them to voice-mail, or transfer them to a different number.

Google Voice is still an evolving product, so by the time you read this, some of the features may have changed, or new features added on.  The aim of Google Voice is to give people control over their phone experience.  And they seem to be doing a decent job so far.  There are even a number of official and third-party applications that let you access Google Voice features from your mobile phone.  Unless you’ve got an iPhone that is.

For some reason, Apple doesn’t seem to want the Google Voice experience on the iPhone.  There were a number of iPhone applications in the App store that let users access their GV accounts, but Apple pulled them all, and they’ve been very tight lipped about why the applications were pulled.  When an official reason was finally offered, Apple said that the applications duplicated functionality that already existed on the iPhone.  Yeah.  Right.  iPhone using consumers can only hope that Apple and Google with patch over whatever snit their having and team up to give us better access to their products and our data.  In the meantime, Google has created a mobile web page for Google Voice to put as much of the functionality into a web app as possible.  To access the web app version, just point Mobile Safari to m.google.com/voice.

Google Voice helps simplify your life by giving you a single phone number for everything, that never changes, but still gives you control over who can call you, where and when you’ll get their call, and how phone messages will find you.  It even allows you to take calls on any phone that happens to be around.  Google Voice gives you the power to make your phone number dance to your own tune.  And that definitely fits my definition of Nifty Tech.

And a thanks to IconsPedia.com for the Google Voice icon at the top of this article. - Editor.

BluBridge Auto - Talk

[This week's review for The Nifty Tech Blog is a Guest Review by Odin1Eye of the View from Valhalla blog. I'd like to thank Odin for being Nifty Tech's first Guest Reviewer, and for providing such an interesting review.  Enjoy! - Editor]

Welcome to Nifty Tech. I am your guest blogger, Odin1Eye, and today I will be detailing the wonders of the BluBridge Auto-Talk by Miccus. So please, relax, put down your tray table, recline way back and enjoy the ride.

The BluBridge Auto-Talk (BBAT) device by Miccus is a straightforward hands-free bluetooth speaker phone device. As such it is priced at what I would consider to be slightly above the mean at US $99.99. However, doing a quick web search will (on most weeks) provide sites that have it at a much more reasonable $59.99.

As it’s name indicates, the BBAT is intended for the commuter. In many areas of the country, using a cell phone while driving has begun to become highly regulated. Currently, in the state of Texas, you can drive with a cell phone, but must use a hands free device in school zones. This on again off again legality makes the probability of an accidental violation much more likely and many drivers are opting for hands-free solutions. As well as using it during the drive, it can easily be used as a desk speakerphone if your cell phone’s speaker is not loud enough.

The BBAT is about the size (and looks roughly similar) to a closed communicator from Star Trek TOS. (No, it doesn’t open.) The exact dimensions, provided by Miccus, are 3.89”L x 2.16”W x .66”H. The device utilizes only four buttons. The largest of the four by far is the Talk button, and is nicely placed in the middle of the device. This button also functions to power on/off the device. Two small toggle buttons reside underneath the Talk button providing volume and a small mute button hides on the left hand side.

The Mount, the BBAT, and an iPhone (for scale).

The BBAT easily pairs to your cell phone and is quite easy to setup. Initially, probably due to user error, I had to re-pair the device several times, but after fairly heavy use, I can say this has not happened since getting to know the device.

The BBAT also will allow you to Voice Dial if your cell phone supports it. Since my iPhone 3GS does, it was one of the first things I had to try. Simply depress the talk button briefly, and the speaker chirps and your phone is ready to accept your voice command. Specifically in regards to the iPhone 3GS, you can also use this capability to “tell” your iPhone what music you want to hear if you have it set up to play through your car stereo.

It is also quiet easy to download your address book into the BBAT. Why would you want to do this? Because the BBAT also supports Caller ID. By default it will tell you the number of the person calling you, and once the address book is loaded, it will phonetically pronounce the name of your caller (sometimes with hilarious results).

The speaker volume and quality is really quite good from a relatively diminutive device. The BBAT has a suction cup bracket that ships with it. The intent is that you will place it in the corner of your windshield and basically forget about it. Great in theory, but in my experience this didn’t work quite as well as would be hoped, but about as well as would be expected. Placed on the windshield, the device resides a considerable distance from the speaker, this distance, and the obligatory road noise, results in a situation where the listener is unable to discern what the speaker is saying. This was easily remedied, however, by moving the device to the side window. Once this was accomplished, all of my test callers were unable to distinguish any difference from my normal call quality. (Don’t forget to remove it before rolling down the window however.)

One more note on the suction cup bracket however. The bracket doesn’t seem to hold the BBAT quite as snugly as would be hoped and with placing it right beside your ear, you will hear a bit of rattle occasionally which can be a bit annoying.

So, the BBAT is a great little device, but Bluetooth speaker devices are nothing exceptionally new, so what makes this worthy of NiftyTech?

Well, as the device is suction cupped to your window, it is in reality also charging via the solar panel built into the back of the BBAT. The fine folks at Miccus have created a Bluetooth device that easily defeats my biggest criticism of Bluetooth devices. I can never keep the danged things charged!

Miccus states the the BBAT provides a huge 800+ hours of standby time, (that is over a month of standby time!) which is quite remarkable in itself, and 13 hours of talk time! Add to this fact that as long as you live somewhere that sees the sun at least ones a month, you will more than likely NEVER need to charge the BBAT!

When I initially heard of this device, I felt it was too expensive. However, I told a coworker about it and he rushed out and purchased one at Buy.com during the Christmas sale at $49.99. After having borrowed his for a bit, I decided it was a must and now have one for myself. I truly enjoy it and would recommend it highly to anyone that spends any amount of time commuting and has a Bluetooth cell phone.

[Odin1eye is a husband and a father.  To make the odd coin to pay the bills, he also works as a Teacher Educator.  In what little spare time is left to him, he publishes the blog View from Valhalla, known for his series of podcast reviews.  Odin has retired from the leadership of the Norse Gods, and lives with his wife and godlings in South Texas.


If you'd like to be a Guest Blogger for The Nifty Tech Blog, write to us at NiftyTech@NiftyTechBlog.com.  Give an example of what you'd like to review and why it should be Nifty Tech. - Editor]

iPhone

Icon courtesy
of Apple

No discussion of Nifty Tech could be complete without mentioning the iPhone. I know, I know, some of you wouldn’t take an iPhone if someone put a gun to your head and threatened to pull the trigger. Many people have a hatred of AT&T Mobile that makes your typical Holy War look like a children’s squabble. Others are sure that Apple Inc. is the source of all evil. Well, tough.

Let’s face it people. All cell phone carriers suck. They just don’t have any incentive to NOT suck. It is the worst kind of collusion, a conspiracy of mediocrity.  AT&T is no worse than Sprint or Verizon or any other carrier.  And for all of Apple’s faults and mistakes, they do turn out some pretty nifty products. So let’s just accept that and move on to look at the tech.

OK. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last three years, you pretty much know where you can get an iPhone and how much it will cost you. If you’re still not sure, your best bet is to look around at http://www.apple.com. I’m sure you’ll find something.  In the states, a subsidized iPhone 3G can be had for $99 and an iPhone 3GS starts at $199.  If you want almost all of the Apps, and none of the AT&T, you can get an iPod Touch starting at $199.

But back to the Tech. To be honest, there area a number of things about the iPhone hardware that really aren't all that special. The camera is low resolution, it eats battery power, and the reception is fairly iffy. Two iPhones, side by side will show different signal strengths and may not have the same call quality. While the touch screen gives you intuitive control over the software, it isn’t very accurate and it may not register every touch. And it poses problems with use in cold weather. The iPhone isn’t perfect by a long shot.  But it does have its fair share of good points.

The software is full of Nifty. The iPhone is a platform that opens up a world of very nifty tools. Some of these will be covered in future articles, so for now, we’ll just look at the ones that come with the iPhone out of the box.

Whether you’re using the Original iPhone, the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3G S, or the iPod Touch, the iPhone OS now gives you previously unknown mobility when accessing e-mail, the web, calendars, and a wealth of other information. Mail and Safari aren’t the best of all possible applications, but they do seem to be head and shoulders over anything else on the mobile market. Part of this is no doubt due to the Unlimited Data packages that many carriers are requiring for iPhone customers. Since you’ve already paid for the all-you-can-consume data service, why not just consume data? Got a question? Look up the answer on Safari. Need to send a message? Pop off a quick e-mail with Mail or send an SMS with Messages. Need directions? Get them from Maps.  On my last phone, I never used the browser because the data cost would have quickly broken the budget.  With the iPhone, if you have signal, you're connected.

Naturally, a small screen doesn't make an ideal browsing experience.  But we are talking about browsing on a phone.  Safari on the iPhone does a fairly good job for a phone.  If a screen renders with the font too small to read, just double-tap the section you want to read and Safari will zoom in on that section.  Double-tap again and you're looking at the whole page.  Some people will cite the lack of Flash support as a fatal flaw in the iPhone.  While this may be true for some, Flash isn't perfect either.  Not all sites require Flash, and many of those that do have found that they have to create Flash-free versions for mobile devices anyway.  And even without Flash support, mobile Safari still does the job for quite a lot of the web.

Mail likewise works well for managing mobile e-mail, now that push mail has become available for those who need it.  The only real drawback I've been able to find with Mail is that it only shows up to 200 mails in each account, and it sometimes doesn't push off old mail to make room for new mail.  It renders html based mail well, supports creating folders, composing, forwarding mail, even sending an attachment.  And with some add-on apps, mail can even send multiple attachments in a single e-mail, although it only does one attachment per e-mail by default.

On top of all that, the iPhone allows each application to implement a user interface unique to it’s needs. The touch screen allows each application to place buttons anywhere on the screen, and to change the layout whenever the context changes.  The motion sensors built into the iPhone give it a completely unique control interface. Not every application makes use of this, but those that do give the user a more natural control over the application.

The iPhone is one of those tech devices that is Nifty, not because of what it does, but because of what it makes possible. It makes computing a thing that can be done from anywhere and puts internet tools in your pocket. It can become the right tool for almost any job, providing a programmer can figure out the right way to use the tools at his disposal. It’s not perfect, but it is Nifty Tech.