Sarah and I didn’t have a landline for a long time. If people needed to reach us, they could call our cell phones. However, when we switched cable providers this summer, we found it was one of those “it’s cheaper to get the phone+WiFi+cable” bundle. Great, but we weren’t about to give away the new phone number to anyone, since people knew to reach us on our cell phone numbers or my Google Voice number. But it was handy to have a dedicated handset…that’s where the ObiTalk Obi110 comes in.

First, the ObiTalk service does a great deal more than just Google Voice. A LOT more. But let’s start with my primary use, and… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Image courtesy of Google

Does Google’s free app goodness ever end? Whether you’re a fan of Google or not, you must admit that the free services they offer are among some of the best. Google is constantly adding new apps and upgrading existing ones to their huge lineup. Google chat expanded a few months ago with the addition of letting you communicate via video and voice (plugin required) to someone right from the chat window. Google announced this morning that now you don’t even need to pickup your phone anymore to make free calls to the US and Canada directly from your Gmail. Since your contacts are fully integrated into Gmail, you can just call… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Although I’m an iPhone guy (right now), I’m always happy to see new Android apps hit the world.  After all, as much as I like Apple (right now), competition is a pretty good thing, and with technology companies, it helps keep them on their toes and avoid arrogance.  And it helps keep the pace of innovation brisk.

So I was pleased to see that Google had released Voice Actions for Android.  Google tells us:

Voice Actions are a series of spoken commands that let you control your phone using your voice. Call businesses and contacts, send texts and email, listen to music, browse the web, and complete common tasks, all just by speaking into your phone.

Are… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Well, the war over Google Voice on an iPhone is over…and Apple has won!

Starting today, Google Voice will be available for both the iPhone and the Palm Pre/Pixi via a mobile Google Voice web site.

According to TechCrunch:

The new Google Voice mobile site shows your inbox with transcribed calls, which you can play from the browser. You can also send SMS messages or dial from the browser. The application ends up making a local call through your cell phone to Google Voice, which then routes your call through its own lines. When someone gets the call, they see your Google Voice number instead of your AT&T number. And when you

One of the main reasons for using an Android powered phone is, in my mind, the remarkably tight integration with Google Voice. The ability to have Google Voice take over the phone functionality of the device, so that outgoing calls come from it rather than there needing to be a callback is a homerun. It makes a huge difference if, like me, you are looking to move to Google voice full-time. That’s a good thing.

Yesterday Jason posted about the new release of Truphone for Android. As a new Nexus One owner I was excited to see the availability of what I have found to be the best VoIP client for mobile devices. That’s a good thing too.

Here’s the not so good thing…… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Here we go, all the news about Google that is fit to print:

Dont Call it the GDrive:  Users of Google Docs rejoice! You can soon upload any file type into Google Docs, whether its an office document or not.  The only restriction is that the file cannot be more than 250MB.  This feature is rolling out over the next few weeks.  And remember, if you need more than the 1GB of storage, you can always buy more from Google.

Third Party Memeo connects to Google Apps for sync: Memeo Connect now offers a way to sync your Google Docs to your desktop.  Users can now have offline access to all… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Photo courtesy of jupiterdigital

Google is furthering their quest for world domination by getting more involved in voice communication. Google is already adding new services and products daily to the already huge list of whats available. According to eWeek, they will soon be adding VOIP services to their Google Voice client. Currently you must be tied to a carrier to use voice but soon they hope to change that with VOIP. This would allow calls to mobile phones and landline using Google Voice via the internet instead of using up your voice minutes.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Sprint announced yesterday at their 2009 Ope\n Developer Conference that they’ll be doing away with extra charges for subscribers using conditional call forwarding to connect their cell phones to third party voice providers such as Google Voice. Previously the carrier was one of the few who charged a per minute fee to their subscribers who programmed their phones to forward incoming calls that were unanswered.

The  new policy:

Although no charges will be applied for conditional call forwarding (meaning busy calls or calls not answered), some Sprint customers may incur a $0.20 per-minute charge if they choose to forward calls directly into voicemail or to another number without first allowing the call to try to

Larry is on duty today but that doesn’t mean he isn’t keeping his eye on things. He just emailed me with great news… Google Voice now has its own mashup that allows you to use thew service without having to give everyone a new number. It is an awesome new mashup, and I for one am thrilled.

Let me explain…… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

The Google Voice service had been operating as a closed invitation only service. Users who joined were provided with a free phone number from which they could direct all incoming calls to any of their regular numbers. That phone number also provided voice mail where the messages were transcribed and also received (and reply to) SMS text messages. Starting today Google is giving existing Voice users three invitations so that they can invite their friends to try the service. When you log into your account the invitations will be listed in the lower left.

Google Voice

Leave it to Michael Arrington to hit the nail on the head. In a post over on TechCrunch, Arrington points out how the recent approval of an iPhone app for Vonage merely serves to highlight the total nonsense Apple spewed when trying to explain their Google Voice rejection.

The gist… Apple said the Google Voice app was rejected because it

appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls…

All good and well until you take a closer look and see that many apps do just that. Numerous camera apps all but replace the “core” camera functionality. And phone apps like Skype, Truphone and the recent Vonage app have.. gasp… dialers of their own.

That’s when Arrington nails it. He writes…… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Hold on to your hats because this one is going to blow your mind… with regard to the whole Google Voice debacle it turns out… wait for it… okay, ready?… it turns out APPLE LIED!!!

Shocked? Amazed? Dumbfounded? Yeah, neither are we.

But the hubris Apple has to bold face lie to the FCC is pretty amazing.

Not sure what we’re talking about? Let’s go back a bit…… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Google Voice, if you have been missing out, is the Internet based phone forwarding service by Google. It gives you a separate phone number, which you can give out as if it is your regular phone number. You can then change your settings to have calls forwarded to any of your phones. Best of all, it is free except for international calls.

Now, OneTouch Solutions has developed OneDialer, a solution for Windows Mobile users to use this wonderful feature on their phone. It is a fully featured Google Voice dialer, SMS and Visual Voicemail client.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Google Voice is already a useful system, but Google is now expanding their Google Voice offering by now offering the ability to listen to your Google Voice voicemail directly in Gmail.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Google Voice activated a new feature yesterday. It allows you to check a box in your Google Voice settings and have all of your SMS Text messages received by the service forwarded to your email. This means dedicated Google Voice users can stop receiving (or sending) any text messages on the phone and instead route everything through email. Can you say “Bye Bye Pricey Unlimited Text Messaging Plans”? Once a text message is forwarded to your email it can be replied to via email as well (Google creates a special email address for each person’s phone that you text). Use a service like Pushmail and you’ll get instant pop-up alerts that are as fast as text messaging.

Google Voice Blog