PaulSpoerry.com

Want in on Google Voice’s web-based, transcribed, custom-greeted voicemail, but you’re not quite ready to adopt a new number? Starting tonight, Voice users can choose to keep their number and still get Google’s upgraded voicemail features. (Note that this still requires a Google Voice invite as GV is still in beta).

Google Voice is a Swiss Army knife of cool and free phone service add-ons — including free SMSes, an online mailbox for voice messages, the ability to have one number ring all of your phone numbers simultaneously, low international rates and a customized voicemail messages for every contact. It’s not phone service per se though, since you still need a mobile phone or landline.

But using Google Voice requires users to use their Google Voice number as their main number. That’s a not-inconsiderable burden, given that some mobile phone users have thousands of contacts who know their number and don’t want the hassle of changing business cards and forcing others to update their contacts.

Google’s solution? Create a light version that gives phone-number-huggers better voicemail. Using a mobile carrier’s call-forwarding codes, Google Voice Light will send a mobile phone’s unanswered calls to a Google-powered mailbox. When callers leave a message there, Google records and transcribes it, and saves it in an online mailbox. The roughly translated text and a link to an online recording can be sent via SMS or e-mail.

The capability will also benefit those who have migrated to Google Voice, since currently the voicemail feature only kicks in when people call the Google Voice number, which forwards the call to a user’s mobile phone. Currently, those who call the mobile phone directly leave a message using the mobile carrier’s network, but with the new system, those calls can be diverted as well.

The voice messages can be stored in perpetuity, forwarded to family or friends, and they can be saved, even if you decide to switch mobile carriers. In return, Google gets your loyalty, more users with Google accounts and more pages for it to place online ads. That’s also not including the training data it gets for its translation engine — not dissimilar to why Google offers a free phone number lookup: GOOG-411.

This doesn’t really help me since my carrier charges for forwarded calls… bummer.

Mostly via How-To Geek

There has been a lot of attention in the news lately about email passwords being compromised. Today we take a look at using KeePass to secure your passwords in an encrypted database so no one can get a hold of them.

KeePass

For this article we are using KeePass 2.09 but you can still download the Classic Edition as well, which you may want to do so you can use certain plugins. Installation is straight forward and after installing KeePass, the first thing is to create a new password database by clicking on File \ New.

You will need to come up with a Master Password which is the only one you will need to remember moving forward. Make sure and pick a strong password with several characters, symbols, and numbers. It can be an entire phrase, sentence, or whatever you want it to be with virtually any characters you want.

Alternatively you can use a Key File which a master password in a file. This makes it so you don’t have to remember a long Master Password, but if it gets lost and not backed up you’re out of luck. Also, you want to keep the file in a secret location other than your local hard drive, malware attacks can find it if it’s openly available on your hard drive.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gmail Notifier Plus rests in the new Windows 7 taskbar and allows you to easily access several components of Gmail quickly. The app uses Gmail’s secured RSS feed to retrieve mail. The notifier has two major features that make it a good implementation into the new taskbar.

Login screen lets you set how often to check for new messages

Jumplist Access:

Right clicking on the Gmail Notifier Plus icon will bring up a jumplist that lists your most recent unread messages. A counter is shown at the top but the jumplist only allows for 10 maximum titles to be displayed. Below are some common tasks that increase productivity.

Message Preview:

Probably the coolest feature of the notifier is that if you hover your cursor over the icon, it will activate thumbnail previews that show an excerpt of your unread mail. The app makes great use of the thumbnail feature to display other alerts as well.

Note that the application is only at version 1.0, and may contain some bugs. Providing feedback will probably help the programmer to improve on the app.

The Gmail Notifier plus was created by daty2k1. You can download it from the Neowin forums here. (Requires registration)

Here’s an alternate mirror link you can use to download as well:
Gmail Notifier Plus Alternate Mirror Download

Yes, I’ll admit it… I *heart* GMail and FireFox; I use them everyday. I wish that GMail didn’t take up a full blown tab in FireFox tho (especially when on the netbook where screen real estate is precious!) You can permanently affix the Gmail (and Reader) tab in your tab bar, reduce it to show the tab favicon only, and display the number of unread items in each using a collection of Firefox add-ons (of course you can… that’s why we LOVE FireFox). See what it looks like in the image above: the Gmail and Reader tabs are on the far left, icon-only, with unread item counts–19 unread messages and 1k+ unread items (yikes!)–on the icons themselves.

To reproduce this setup in your own copy of Firefox, you’ll need four Firefox add-ons which Gina Trapani has put all together in a single collection. Install all the add-ons in the Icon-Only Perma-Tabs for Gmail and Google Reader collection. Restart Firefox.

Then, in Better Gmail 2, make sure “Unread Message Count in Favicon” is checked. In Better GReader, make sure “Show Unread Count in Favicon” is checked. Open Gmail and Google Reader in new tabs. Right-click on those tabs, and choose “Faviconize tab.” Then, to make them permanent (i.e., open automatically every time you launch Firefox), right-click again and choose “Permatabs->Permanent Tab.” Once you’re done, whenever you launch Firefox or even hit “Close All Tabs,” your icon-only perma-tabs containing Gmail and GReader will persist.

THANX GINA!