Talk Googly To Me.

Sweet! Looks like Google is finally ready to transition Grand Central into a grown-up Google app. Its gonna be called Google Voice and is open to everyone who already has a grand central account. What? You didn't sign up when I told you to? Oh, well then you'll just have to wait like a sucker till it gets rolled out to the plebes. I guess you can take a look to see what you're missing.

• Google Voice-Features

So, most excitingly, there's a voice mail transcripts feature. Which I assume will just plunk peoples' VM into your gmail inbox with all the other messages you care about. Which seems pretty cool and even more exciting when you imagine the kind of Android implementation this service will get. So it looks like someone's realized that messaging is messaging, and I don't care what medium is used. The less places I have to check for new communications the better. Throw them all in the same inbox and use filters to sort if necessary.

It'll also be nice when they integrate my gmail contacts list with the Grand Central list that I never maintained all that well. Google, keeping your informations sorted and updated and happy.

• Official Google Blog: Here comes Google Voice

P.S. What's up with the sample video? "I left the secret plans on your desk?" Sounds a little shady... Are they finally ready to launch that space laser?

P.P.S. Still waiting on my upgrade link in Grand Central, apparently it could take days for the roll-out to finish. Why did I get so excited this morning?

• google voice blog

I Was Right.

Think back.  As far as you can remember.  To a time of darkness and desperation.  Yes, all the way back to 2005 in the days prior to the iPhone.  In today's 'I Was Right' we're examining Jon Rubinstein's ridiculous claim that convergence devices just wouldn't pan out and didn't offer any benefits.  A claim that I think we can all agree at this point was completely and utterly wrong.  So, Jon, I was right.

• Daily Placebo- September 2005
  
• Jon's Apple Insider interview

Almost Too Smart.

So I'm an alumni of a prestigious institution.  How prestigious?  Very.  And one of the responsibilities of being an alumni of prestigious institutions is contributing to fund its programs; or at least dodging the undergrads who call and ask for contributions.

I got an email about a month ago saying that the annual phonathon was starting up again, and that it really does make the student's day to get an alumni contribution, I took immediate action.  I mean I could just hear the crestfall on the other side of the line when I declined to fund initiatives that are transforming my beloved Alma mater.  And no one wants to hear that.  So I looked up the phonathon number and saved it in my phone under "St Mary's phonathon- DON'T ANSWER!" and promptly forgot all about it.

Until recently when my phone rang and I looked to see who was calling...  Bam, no more depressed students, giving away perfectly good money, or talking on the phone.  Win-freaking-win.  So I guess you have to ask yourself, am I a bad man?  Or are you just jealous you didn't think of it first?

Oh Billy!

Brace yourself to be overwhelmed by a flood of communications. (Actually just me cause you losers don't have Helios. I'm just bragging.) When I first got my Ocean it had POP email access to my gmail account. Then Google added in IMAP support so that my inbox online was synced with the inbox in my pocket. Pretty sweet, but it wasn't push. That is, I had to check for new mail by hand. Like a barbarian. Well those days are spent cause Helio just rolled out push email to all its devices. I'm not really sure how that works (isn't it gmail that pushes to Helio?) but I'm not gonna start rocking the boat. My gmails and jmails show up on the alerts menu like SMSes, missed calls and voicemails. Of course anyone who reads this will be all over those "oh, I haven't checked my email" excuses like rasberry jam on a hot, buttered english muffin. Crannies, nooks, whatever. So bring on the information glut in full 3G fashion. I hope I don't drown.

• Heliocity: Gmail gets Push

Oh, and check out this video about SMSing. Its got an amusing main character who you might recognize from the pictures above.
Heliocity: texting your way to love

Got Buddy?

This is kinda sweet for me. One of the features on Helio is the buddy beacon. Its a service that uses the GPS receiver in the phone to push your location onto your friends' maps. Kinda a neat idea, but the big downside is that your friends have to have Helios to use the service. And since I can't convince any of you chumps to throw down, my map only has a marker for where I am making it sad and not very useful.

On to the sweet part. Helio sold the Buddy Beacon trademark to a company called uLocate a while ago, and they've just released a 2.0 version of the software. There are various changes but most importantly users of other services can use Buddy beacon on their phones too! Right now the site lists: Alltel, Helio, metroPCS, Sprint, and iPhone. On some phones this just involves pointing to a web page instead of installing the new app like on my phone. Which is why I assume they list iPhone as supported, but not At&t. You just need a good enough web browser to run the mobile page.

On the downside the buddy location symbols seem to be MIA in favor of a buddy circle. So you'll know which block your bud is on, not what part of the bar. I assume this is because most devices (*cough* iPhone) can't locate themselves that accurately and rather than list specious information, they just generalize it all. I think I'd like the option to display my little Helio icon on the map like I used to, and other people would have big ass circles. But maybe they're trying to keep everyone from knowing what kinda cocked-up device other people rock.

Obfustication aside, this is an exciting update that makes this service actually useful. Oh, and there's a Facebook app you can add too that I haven't checked out. But I assume it'll let you find friends that also have the service.

• Buddy Beacon <-> Home

• Heliocity - The Unofficial Helio Community » Buddy Beacon 2.0 Launched by uLocate

Great Tiny Art.

So I've been doing a little more to make backgrounds for my new phone ever since I got all the ringtones I could immediately conjure taken care of. There are some pretty good ones if I do say so myself. But honestly I'm like the only one who is going to see these most of the time and it seems selfish. So, ever being an altruist, here's a little flash slideshow of my phone background screens. Enjoy.

Customize Your Junx.

Did you know that you can customize the signature that is appended to emails sent from your Verizon Blackberry?  All you have to do is hit:
https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw
and change the form email so that I'm not bludgeoned with Verizon marketing every time you send me something.  Amazing!

And if that doesn't work we should go break a window in some Verizon executive's corner office cause that's ridiculous.

How Rude.

I just got a phone call.  "Hello." "Click."  WTF?  I hit the call history and look at the number.  It rings again in a couple seconds.  Same number.  By now I'm looking at the reverse phone number lookup results online.  York, PA huh?  "Hello." "I'm sorry, I have the wrong number. Click."  "..."  Alright, you dialed the wrong number, twice now, but you don't have to act like I have some kind of phone plague that can be transmitted through cell towers.  Chat me up a little, tell me an amusing story.  I feel like this could be an exercise to help ice breaking skills and general telephone cordiality.  Once a week hit ten numbers on the keypad and when the receiver lifts on the other end ask for someone.  Chances are he won't be there, but don't just hang up.  Fight that incredibly awkward feeling inside and have an amusing little exchange.  Make up a story about an escaped monkey or ask their preference as if they were settling a raging debate in your living room.  Come on folks, you can do better than "Click."

I Can't Park In The Lobby?

Was this the plan? "I'm upset that my phone doesn't work so I drive my car into your building"? A man in South Korea drove a Mercedes with "Delinquent SK" written on it through the front door. (Well, as far through a revolving door as a car will fit.) Somehow I don't think this resolved his troubles, even though it was a very effective attention getting device.

• Engadget: Man returns phone to carrier... without leaving car

Snake In The Phone.

See?  Now this is the kind of noise that makes me not want to be a wireless customer.  They've got "sticky downwards" pricing, which means its much easier for the customer charge to go up than down.  There are all kinds of taxes in your phone bill that tack on extra charges and they don't hesitate to pass new taxes right on to their customers rather than take a hit on the bottom line.  But don't go thinking, even for a second, that you'll see the friendly end of a tax-break on that bill.  Those go straight in the snake's pockets.

• Techdirt: Sprint Passes Along Tax Increases To Customers, But Conveniently Ignores Tax Cuts

I can't wait till someone takes the wind out of these guys' sails and tells it like it is.  They're a "bit pipe" like TechDirt says in discussing the reasons that Verizon declines on the iPhone earlier.  They want to be content providers and are getting dragged kicking and screaming into providing only a connection.  ( Like when we recently reset our Comcast connection and they needed our Comcast email address to complete it.  We don't know our Comcast address.  We don't use our Comcast address and we never will.)  Anyway, that's apparently why Apple went with Cingular over Verizon, the latter wasn't willing to be more of a "bit pipe" letting Apple handle more content and service than ever before.  The Verizon CEO said "They would have been stepping in between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to take a back seat … on hardware and service support,"  Shit, that's the best sales pitch Verizon could've made to me.  "We're not really in charge of anything."  Where do I sign up for that?

• Techdirt: Verizon Implies Cingular's Giving Up Way Too Much To Carry The iPhone
• Verizon rejected Apple iPhone deal - USATODAY.com

iBet.

There's a little back and forth over at Wired about the impending impact of the iPhone. Some think it'll be big, catering to a new type of user, while others think that they're missing the mark and trying to take the smartphone market in a direction it might not want to go. There's lots of nice points about economics and precedents that I'm not going to be able to match. All I know is what I like.

"If Apple listened to their customers, we'd have a boring phone that looks like an iPod, click-wheel and all -- that's how most envisioned the iPhone."

Uh, no. If they listened to me they'd be making bluetooth video iPods with full length touchscreens. I can wait a few years for full phone convergence, I just want my damn gadgets to play nice in the meantime. Click wheels were novel, but now they're passé. I want color tactile displays that change content if not some type of holographic flavor.

He is right about some things though, I don't give a crap about what's already out there in the smartphone market. I'm not looking for a tiny keyboard or a stylus. I don't care about syncing with outlook or continuous email contact. I want to choose the options that I need and don't care about "features" that are marketed to other demographics. Give me a wifi connection and some hardware that makes it reasonable to use the Internet and I'll scout my own hotspots and use my choice of messaging medium. That'd make for a great iPod right there, but to make an iPhone we're talking network. I'm pretty sure that monkeys in Korea can make the hardware for phones today, so unlike the iPhone's groundbreaking user interface, the GSM innards are the same old crap.

And herein lies the problem. I have an innate distrust of wireless providers. I perceive them as parasites trying to suck as much life out of me without making me pissed off enough to do something about it. The iPhone is different from an iPod not just in its interface, but in its dependence on a parasite. I don't have to use the iTunes Music Store to use my iPod. (And I don't.) Heck I don't even have to use the iTunes software to load content onto my iPod if I don't want to. But throw down for a wireless phone and you must hitch your wagon to one of these providers. Its an entirely different kind of product (with a service) and an entirely different level or customer commitment.

So we can talk all day about these things, whether or not the design is too far fetched to curry existing smartphone customers, whether its different enough to persuade new users into the market. But in the end Apple isn't even selling these things, Cingular is, so arguing about whether the iPhone will have a similar impact on the market is almost silly. Of course the phone market is more established than the portable mp3 player market was. And of course there's a larger entry hurdle for buyers to get over than with an iPod. But if you look at this from a User Interface trend perspective, screens are getting larger, functions are more familiar, and input devices are becoming more varied. People that want to peck away at tiny keys have their devices, while the rest of us have been waiting out something else. Of course someone was going to make a mobile touchscreen. Apple just got one to market first and they've got the "disruptive technology" chops to make everyone start arguing about whether this is the new wave. Its an option. If you don't like it, wait it out and the voice recognition and holographic input folks will be around the corner in a little bit.

• WIRED Blogs: Cult of Mac

I'll Have Your Network With His Phone And Their Services.

I saw a commercial yesterday - I dunno why I saw a commercial, I must have been spacing on the fast forward button - for a cell phone or something. It was called Helio and was almost in the style of those Old Navy commercials that make me vomit. Not so much in the dancing around to hip music trying to be a GAP ad, but in the cool young people having fun with whatever the product is. I know that sounds vague, but I'm fine with it. Anyway, the one guy finds the other guy using the phone's GPS or something (kinda cool) and the other guy says something about Google Maps on his phone. Alright, I'm listening.

Well, I wanted to find out more about this product, but I couldn't remember the name of the company (advertising is very effective on me) until I read an article about how bad Cingular sucks and someone asked what the deal with Helio was in the comments. (no one answered him) Ah! It was called Helio. Wiki to the rescue-

Helio is a MVNO joint venture between SK Telecom and Earthlink. MVNO means that they don't own any licensed spectrum but rent service from other providers. Look at the coverage map of my area. No whitespace. They've got a ton of 3G coverage that they lease from Sprint and they lease voice only access from Verizon for all the other areas. What? They only reason I'm on Verizon is because they have the most pervasive coverage in my area. They don't have the best service they have the most ubituitous service. And now they don't have that because I can go through someone else to get a hybrid service. So right out of the blocks that's sounding sweet. But there's more:

The premise of this new company would be to bring advanced mobile devices in service from SK Telecom's home market of Korea to the US wireless market, where such advanced devices had been noted, by many, to be lacking. Helio, as it was to be called, would market itself to the younger demographic, promoting itself using the latest in cutting-edge handset technology. They plan to avoid taking on the major US wireless carriers directly, and instead they intend to carve out a niche for themselves with technology-savvy consumers.

Yeah? Bringing some of that rocking handset technology over here from Korea? Awesome. And marketing themselves to a savvy consumer base sounds like they won't want to piss people off by crippling their phones.

Want some more? Ok, they realize they're selling convergence items. So after you switch over for one of their devices you can send in your old tech for cash rewards. Like the phone in my pocket is worth a $46.75 trade-in. And I'm pretty sure I've got a couple more in my glove box. But its not just phones. They want iPods, PSPs, cameras, PDAs whatever your new convergence device is replacing. I mean, sure maybe you could get more for it on eBay if you're willing to put a bit more effort into it. But I find it very refreshing for a company to embrace convergence and enable its customers' transition.

That and the options look so freaking simple. Pick a phone, pick how many minutes you want and pick a data option. 65 or 40 bucks a month. I obviously need to look around a little more but this sounds like the kind of company I'm angling for.

• Helio | Drift, Hero, & Kickflip cell phones, MySpace Mobile, buddy beacon, mobile games, & more

Oh, That's The Charger For A 9454b, Not A 9455b.

Freaking phone companies, they squeeze every last drop out of you. But now China could be paving the way for us all. They're trying to mandate a standard charging interface for cell phones. That'd be super guys, and if the plan to have use USB as the standard maybe we'll finally get some phones that sync with computers and don't waste all kinds of power. But that's probably just crazytalk.

• Techdirt: China To Mandate Standardized Phone Chargers

Oh, and I did some research on USB. Its kinda interesting stuff, coming up with data transfer standards and seeing the various incarnations. No, wait. Maybe its only interesting to me.

• Universal Serial Bus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don't Talk Through My Show.

I just dropped 20 bucks to get in here so sit down, shut-up and turn your damn phone off. Remember back in the days when there were ushers wearing little red vests at the movies? Yeah, me neither. Theaters have had to streamline their work-flows just to squeeze out a profit. Basically that means you're going to buy your ticket at a touchscreen kiosk, wait 20 minutes in line for food with a 300% mark-up, and that there's no one to oversee unruly behavior during the show.

But don't worry, they're working on a fix. Select theaters are handing out remote controls to 'mature' audience members that will alert employees when attention is needed. Its kinda like an air marshal, except his gun shoots ushers instead of bullets. Now I'm all about throwing people out for talking on their phones, but I'm not sure if a teenager in a red vest is the right medium. I want it to be some thing public, something shaming. Something you want never to happen again. So I've come up with a few options:

1. The movie stops, a spotlight cuts through the pitch black from directly above the phone user and a parabolic mic pumps his conversation over the 7 channel surround sound.
2. Five men dressed as Storm Troopers charge into the room and escort the offender out at 'laser-point.' He is then taken to a separate room and forced to watch episode one.
   
3. A big claw descends from the ceiling grasping the offender by the head and drops him into a slot on the side of the auditorium. He shoots down a slide and ends up in a Chuck E Cheeze and gets left in the parking lot by the 8-year old who won him.
   
4. Pee-Wee Herman rushes in doing the secret word dance and screaming and then proceeds to do what he does in movie theaters.
   

• Techdirt: Ever Wished You Could Push A Button To Remove A Disruptive Movie Watcher?

Activate Stealth Driving Mode.

Forget about having to install tracking software in your car; pretty much everyone in the country is already carrying a tracking device. While it might be a good idea to re-purpose existing technology, how do we toe the line between privacy and the common good? It would be very useful to be able to track traffic on a large scale, and we have the technology currently in place. No lane counters or morons in helicopters needed. But we also value anonymity in this country, something that you probably assume your phone company respects. But I can't help thinking that a program will soon be monitoring my speed and mailing me a ticket. That would technically satisfy my beef about speed cameras not providing ubiquitous enforcement, but I think I'm smart enough to turn my phone off when I drive. At least after the first five or six tickets.

• Slashdot | Tracking Traffic Jams With Cell Phones