PaulSpoerry.com

Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, through dozens of features — ranging from call screening to voicemail transcription to the ability to send and receive SMS by email. While we’ve heard from users that they love our growing list of features, we’re conscious of the fact that Google Voice can seem overwhelming to people trying it for the first time. So we’ve created a short video that gives an overview of what Google Voice can do.

In addition, we’ve created a set of short videos that dive into more detail about ten features of Google Voice:

1. Voicemail transcription
2. One number
3. Personalized greetings
4. International calling
5. SMS to email
6. Share voicemails
7. Block callers
8. Screen callers
9. Mobile app
10. Conference calls

The videos show why you might want to use each feature and basic instructions for getting started. And each video focuses on just one topic so you can learn about the features that matter to you.

Finally, we just launched our own YouTube channel at youtube.com/googlevoice. You can view all of the videos mentioned above in a custom video gadget we built for this channel, which will help you keep track of which videos you’ve already watched.

OK, before I get into the specs, leaks, etc let me explain the title. Right out the gate the major things to know are:

• They’ll be sold unlocked – no contract required
• Developed by HTC and sold directly from Google
• GSM with possibility of UMTS (3G) on AT&T and T-Mobile (what I read here is “SIM CARDS”)
• CDMA is likely in the future (why would they NOT want Verizon and to a lesser extent Sprint)
• Android 2.1
• They just purchased Gizmo5 – next in line to Skype as a VOIP service

The phone itself will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz ARM CPU, it will use an OLED display, and have a capacitive touch screen with on-screen keyboard (*sigh*… I hate touch screen kb’s… I need a physical keyboard).

Daring Firball says they’ve found the strings of a Google phone visitor in their weblogs:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD56C) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

So back to how they’ll gut the cellular industry… If you add up all the different pieces what you’re looking at is a phone that:

• Requires no contract
• Is VOIP enabled
• Has Google Voice built in

If you REALLY wanted too… you could skip the carriers all together and simply use the phone on open Wifi or even Mifi. At that point the carriers are meaningless. Voice communications via cellular doesn’t fit into Google’s business plan at all. ANYTHING over the Internet, be it voice call via VOIP, text messsages via Google Voice, location based look-up with Google search on your phone, etc go directly to Google’s bottom line… search and advertisements. As far as Google is concerned if the carriers become nothing but data providers… so be it.

Look for this to be released in January (sad they missed the  holiday season). Google KNOWS that mobile is the next major wave of computing. They’ve been angling in this direction for quite some time and the release of an unlocked Google designed phone makes it crystal clear that they intend to dominate mobile in the way they’ve dominated search. It’s not a lock… they have to battle the entrenched iPhone and of course Microsoft is coming out with Windows Mobile 7 (though admittedly they’re moving so slowly that they may miss the bus). The point here is that unlike Apple and Microsoft and RIM, Google is making a move here that in the long run could completely sidestep the major carriers… or at least cause them to be nothing but data providers. We are of course a few years out from anything like this happening en mass… but if you look at what Google is doing that’s definitely a very real possibility.

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.

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