Ideas from Mark Stout

Funny how tech priorities change. In the first 30 years I lived from one PC to another. Starting with a Radio Shack Model I, then an IBM PC, then a long, long succession of PC compatibles; each faster than the last with ever increasing hard drives. The change from one PC to a new one was a sea change. Each so much faster and smoother. Now, I've been content with a laptop built in 2013. It has an i7 processor and 12 gigabytes of memory, so performance wise it is fine. I admire my foresight then to go big.  I do not game play or do high end video processing. I rarely use it as a laptop. Its hooked to two monitors and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.  My sole tweak to my home setup when quarantine and working from home started in March was a docking station so I could switch easily from work laptop to personal laptop. If I covet anything, its more and larger monitors. You can't go too large, or too many. After the fever of wanting a new PC passed from a every two year event, to thre...

One of the satisfying experiences with Google Voice, is receiving a unsolicited call.  Why is that a good thing?  Because of the pleasure I get when I then go into GV and flag that number as Spam.  I have the option then of making future calls from that number sound to them like they have reached a disconnected number. Or, if I wanted to be really mean, I could record a long message just for calls like that, and make future calls from that number go to that message.  I have never done that, but in certain moments relish the idea that I could. Such is the power of Google Voice. Now, Google Voice takes the signals they get from all their users about what numbers are Spam and shares that information with their other users.  In their Google Voice Blog yesterday the GV team they announced : Thanks to the help of the thousands of Google Voice users who mark calls as spam everyday—and our own spam identification tools—it is now possible to automatical...

If you are a Google Voice lover as I clearly am, and a Sprint customer, then you may share my interest in the new integration between Sprint and Google Voice . Basically, you can make your GV number your Sprint number for vice versa. I'm not really sold on why I'd want to do this.  A huge benefit of GV for me is if I hand out that number, and have all calls sent to my cell phone, if I later lose or break my cell phone any calls can be forwarded to another phone for me. I was in a cell store one day when a plumber who listed only his cell phone as his business number found out it would take three days to replace his broken phone.  That was three days without customers being able to reach him.  Needless to say, he was not happy.  A Google Voice number would make that a non-issue. I guess you can still do this, but when I went to make the switch, I was told my phone was not eligible.  I had to contact Sprint to find out why.  I will when I have some t...

There's no doubt I love Google Voice.  Now sad news from Google.  They are closing down Gizmo5.  The desktop VOIP client usable with Google Voice will be no more. Google bought Gizmo and integrated its technology into the their Gmail phone service.  Rumor has it that there was once a wonderful Google developed/Gizmo5 based Windows Voip client being tested inside Google, but it will never see the light of day.  They instead want 100% web options. TechCrunch has all the history and a copy of the email going out to Gizmo users.

Some people trying to follow the instructions in my post " Recording your own notes with Google Voice " do not see an "Show advanced Settings" link that I mention.  This is where it is on my Google Voice.  I am posting the screen shot here, since you cannot post a photo to comments in Blogger.

Earlier this week, Google rolled out telephone calls within Gmail. Basically what they did was to allow phone calls to be made from within Google Chat.  If you already have a Google Voice (GV) account, then the call is made with your Google Voice number as the Caller ID. When I first tried it, it required I download and install the   voice and video chat plug-in .  No problem. Unlike Google Voice, it dos not make a call to one of your phones before connecting you to the caller, but rather connects you directly to the microphone and speakers (or headset) on your PC. To make a call, just click "Call Phone" that appears on the left hand column, underneath Chat. A dialpad appears.  You can either type the number using the keypad, type in a number in the search box, or search your contacts by typing into the search box. Without Google Voice, you cannot receive calls from the phone system.  If you do have GV, you can click Settings,  Voice Settings, p...

In the last back to school column for this year, I discuss free or inexpensive software and services students should have.

If you pay for a business oriented Google Apps account, you have not been able to use your Google Voice in it. Now you can. Gina Trapani of This Week in Google fame , and many other accomplishments, explains how .

Evernote announced their new sort-of-an-app store today, calling it The Trunk .  It will be a  good way to keep up-to-date with all the various tools, add-ons, integrations and hardware set to work with Evernote. One product they featured in the press briefing this morning was Dial2Go's   Dial2Note .  It allows you to dial a phone number, record a message and the first 30 seconds is transcribed and the text put into your Evernote account so it is searchable. The free service allows five messages a month, while the unlimited service is $30 a year. Or...you could get a free Google Voice account and similar capability for free. First, you have to setup your Google Voice for to record messages when you call it from your own cell phone.  I have covered that before in this post . Then you have to setup your Google Voice to send the transcriptions to your Evernote e-mail address.  Google Voice can be set to email me the transcription or text it to ...

Does your e-mail have Verizon or Comcast in it?  Do you find yourself enticed to move from one provider to another but pass up savings just to keep your e-mail address everyone already knows? Then this week's Family Tech is for you.  Have one e-mail address, forever! And as a bonus, how to have one phone number forever, even if you change cell phone carriers, or move, or lose your cell phone. And all for free. Read about it now at InsideNova.com

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One of Google Voice's many cool features, was its ability to call the Gizmo5 soft phone.  Using Gizmo5 I could take calls on my computer much as you can with Skype.  With the calls originating from Google Voice, there was no cost for incoming or outgoing calls.  Technically, they were all incoming calls since Google Voice called Gizmo5. When Google bought Gizmo we all started the wait for a Google branded Gizmo soft phone.  TechCurnch reported a while back that Google was testing one internally (Google calls it dogfooding, as in to eat your own dog food). With it, you can type in the number or choose your contact on the app and it invoked Google Voice to place the call. TechCrunch also reported that the project was on hold, and maybe even likely to be killed.  Apparently Google Founders do not want them developing software that runs outside the browser.  Hello!  Google distributes Google Earth, Picasa, an...

A few interesting things are going on, I haven't had a chance to post. Google Voice is now open to all.  If you don't have one of their free accounts, get one.  I've written about i t a lot here and will be writing more soon.  There are some good tips in that link for new Google Voice users. Evernote is now two years old.   I wanted to make their Meetup last night in DC, but the press of other engagements, don't you know.  I've also written a lot of good tips about it, including my most read post "Your First Day with Evernote" . And finally, Dropbox has a new sharing model if you don't mind using a pre-release version.  And here are my previous Dropbox posts .

Earlier this week I had to make a series of phone calls.  It reminded me again of my favorite use of Evernote. When I have to make a series of calls, I use Google Voice to call out via my Gizmo5 client so I can use my computer headphones and keep my hands free for typing. As I wait for the call to connect, I create a new Evernote note for the call and open it in its own window. In the Evernote client, I search Evernote for previous calls I've made to the same vendor.  When I finally get done holding for the next available operator, I have all the information at my finger tips; in fact I have to wait for them to pull up the same information from their computer. I have found some of the people I talk with to be a bit thrown by the idea that I have all my notes of previous conversations before me.  It makes it harder for them to, well, "handle" me.

Google Voice turns one today.  I've written a ton about it.  And one post alone about Google Voice is responsible for 20% of the traffic to this blog " Recording your own notes with Google Voice ."

  My Family Tech column this week was about the choices we have in browsers.  I mentioned to my readers that I love Google Chrome and promised a blog post outlining my favorite extensions. I moved to Google Chrome full time a few months ago.  Now that the latest release supports extensions, and there are many useful extensions out there, I can fully recommend Google Chrome for most people. With web access most people's number one use of a computer, your browser is a big deal.  Changing it is akin to a sales company moving their CRM from Seibel to Salesforce, or a corporation converting their financials to SAP.  Of course, it is safer for browsers.  You can, and should, have multiple browsers on your PC.  While I use Chrome primarily, I also have Internet Explorer 8 which I use for one mis-guided web site that seems to work only with IE.  And I keep Firefox, my long time favorite, around too. I thought I'd review some of the extensions I've ...

Coolgeex has a pretty useful Google Voicemail Reference Sheet . (via Lifehacker.com )

Apparently Google Voice added a feature overnight allowing you to send the same text message to several people.  That's handy; I oven want to send the same one to wife and son. When I click the SMS button on the main screen, and type a person's name, and select it, I then get a comma at the end of their phone number and the phone number field retains the focus so I an enter in another name or number. Per messages I see on Twitter, you can up to five recipients.

As I've said many times before, I am smitten with Google Voice .  In the last job, as an Account Representative, I used Chad Smith's excellent Google Voice Add-On for Firebox .  It allowed me to click on a phone number, say in Salesforce.com, the CRM system, and that number would automatically call my Gizmo5 client and I could speak with my client using my computer headset.  It was an awesome part of my workflow. That Add-On is the one of two things that keep me using Firefox.  The other is Firebug that I only need when doing Javascript programming; something I have not done much of recently. Since being laid off I haven't really needed the click-to-dial capability so I've used Chrome almost 100% of the time. Today, via TechMeme , I was alerted to an Official Chrome Google Voice Extension that gives me the click-to-dial capability in the Chrome Dev version  Chrome.  ( Update 1/25/2010  : Today's new release of the stable r...

TechCrunch is reporting Google has snapped up Gizmo5 .  If true, this could mean fascinating things for Google Voice. Day 2 : Nov. 10, 2009 :   Still unconfirmed.   Andy Abramson has some insights. Day 4 : Nov. 12, 2009 : Confirmed by Google Voice Blog.