Google Voice transcriptions read like they came out of the ass-end of a hair dryer. They’re surprisingly terrible, especially since Google voice recognition is generally pretty reliable. Let’s all point at laugh at your worst examples of botched voicemails, Google-style.
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Google Voice could be next on the company’s consolidation chopping block, according to recent word that has surfaced, with the app being nixed in favor of integration with Hangouts, following … Continue reading
My free lunch is about to end. I’m one of a few hundred thousand customers enjoying free monthly home phone service.* We use a low-cost analog telephone adapter (ATA) called an OBi, connected to Google Voice for free domestic home phone service. But on May 15th, Google is dropping support for the XMPP protocol that makes this work. While Google Voice and Hangouts will still offer free… Read More
Brace yourself Google Voice fanboys, your treasured service is probably not long for this world. But don’t you worry; the sooner it’s dead the better we’ll all be.
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This article was written on November 10, 2010 by CyberNet.
I’ve been getting into using Google Voice more and more these days since I’m able to send text messages to any phone number without having to pay for an outrageously priced SMS plan. With my iPhone I can use an app like Notifo to get free push notifications for SMS messages that I receive, and then there are several apps to choose from for sending messages using your account (or even Google’s free mobile-optimized site).
The even bigger benefit, however, is that I’m also able to respond to any messages right from my computer. With GVNotifier sending and receiving SMS messages with Google Voice doesn’t seem any more difficult than sending an instant message. If you receive a text message it will popup on the screen, and you can instantly respond from within that window.
Keep in mind that the app also handles calls and voicemails, and Windows 7 users will appreciate the jumplist support that provides quick access to your favorite contacts. At times GVNotifier still feels a bit rough around the edges, but from a functionality aspect it gets the job done.
Here are some frequently asked questions, and some answers provided by the developer:
Unfortunately the developer hasn’t released an update since June 2010, but for the most part it already does everything I want it to. The only thing I’d like to see at this point is an easy way to display the phone number associated with each contact. I have a few contacts that have multiple phone numbers assigned to them, and I have to double-click to open each of their contact entries to find the correct one. That’s just a minor annoyance, and definitely won’t keep me from using the app.
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This article was written on December 24, 2010 by CyberNet.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m trying to use Google Voice more, and one thing that I’m shocked Google hasn’t done is tightly integrate SMS messages with the Google Talk instant messenger. That way if you’re online and someone sends you an SMS it will also flow through to your chat client so that it’s easier to respond.
Last week I decided to start searching around to see if anyone had found a way to do this… a way for me to receive my SMS messages as an IM to my Google Talk account, and then be able to turn around and respond to them as if it was a typical IM conversation. Turns out there is a web-based service called GVMax that works remarkably well in this regard.
As you can see in the screenshot above there are several different notification methods you can use including Google Talk, Prowl, email, Twitter, Howl, and more. For my purposes I’m only using it for Google Talk, and once I got it configured I was amazed with the results. You’ll notice that within seconds of receiving an SMS message you will receive the IM, and responding to it goes back through your Google Voice account as an SMS to the recipient. That’s right, this fully supports two-way (send and receive) conversations instead of just serving as a notifier. The person you’re chatting with will have no idea that you’re using Google Talk rather than your phone, and the history of your messages are still kept in Google Voice just as if you had sent them using a typical method.
There are some things to note though. For one all the messages you receive will appear as a new contact. If the number is in your Google Contacts they will show up as the name of the person followed by the label designated for a particular number. That might sound confusing, but it’s actually simple. The names of your contacts will look like “John Doe [mobile]” or “John Doe [home]” depending on the label you set to the phone number they sent the messages with.
After you set up the service it’s important to be aware that GVMax automatically creates a filter in your Gmail account so that the messages are forwarded on to a special GVMax email address that is specific to you. Make sure you don’t delete this filter, otherwise the service will stop working.
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
This article was written on May 09, 2011 by CyberNet.
Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.
Sprint and Google Voice Integration Not Very Smooth
I don’t even have a Sprint account but I was still pretty excited when I saw that the Google Voice integration with the carrier was live. I was thinking that this may mean other carriers would follow down the same path, but it looks like there are some major kinks that would have to be worked out first. I’ll just stick to using Google Voice on my phone without any direct carrier integration.
LastPass Takes Precautions for Traffic Anomaly
There’s a lot of news floating around that LastPass has been hacked, but really all LastPass is trying to do is take precautions for a network traffic anomaly that they haven’t been able to explain. In an interview their CEO said that if accounts were compromised it would “be on the orders of tens of users out of millions that could be in that scenario.“
Spotify Adds iPod Syncing
The new version of Spotify will let you manage your iPod classic, iPod nano and iPod shuffle directly in Spotify. You’ll then be able to sync playlists to the devices just like you can in iTunes.
Gmail Now Stores Up to 25k Contacts
The Gmail team has increased your contact storage so that you can have up to 25k contacts (up from 10k), and each contact can contain 128KB worth of data/notes (up from 32KB).
Apple Releases New iMac with Thunderbolt
The new Apple iMacs are now equipped with Sandy Bridge processors and have Thunderbolt ports that support high-speed peripherals.
Pandora Boasts 10 Billion Thumbs Up/Down Ratings
Pandora’s method of letting users rate songs using a thumbs up/down is rather widely used. According to them 10 billion songs have been rated using their system.
Bin Laden Web Traffic Doesn’t Break Records
Akamai says that the traffic around Osama Bin Laden’s death hit 4.1 million page views per minute, but that doesn’t even put the event in the top 10.
Amazon Selling Top Songs at $0.69 Each
Amazon is getting competitive in the music market by pricing many of the most downloaded songs on the site at just $0.69, which undercuts Apple even more than Amazon’s pricing already did.
Search Cydia from Your Desktop Browser
The Cydia Search website will let you look for apps on your desktop computer to make finding your downloads a bit easier. You cannot, however, use this to download apps.
Chrome-Style Scrollbar Search Highlighting in Firefox
One of my favorite features in Chrome is whenever you perform a “find in page” search it will highlight the locations where the results appear in the scrollbar. With this extension you can get similar functionality in Firefox.
Easily Unlock Hidden Features in Windows 8 Builds
We recently wrote an article that explored the new Task Manager in Windows 8, and now someone has created a simple application that will let you unlock some of the hidden features such as the Task Manager, Ribbon UI in Windows Explorer, and more.
PDANet Hides Tethering Usage From Carriers
A new version of PDANet for both Android and iOS promises to hide data that could indicate to carriers you are tethering your device without having a plan.
Craiggers Greatly Improves the Craiglist Web Experience
Craiggers is a free site that is built on top of Craigslist, and it works the way you’d expect the official Craigslist site to work.
Opera 11.5 Available for Testing
The latest iteration of the Opera browser offers up password syncing and it also has some backend work that opens the door for extension developers to create cool add-ons for the Speed Dial screen.
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
This article was written on December 07, 2010 by CyberNet.
I don’t make many phone calls, but lately I’ve been on the verge of migrating my contacts over to my Google Voice phone number. The big reason I want to to do this is to to completely eliminate my text messaging fees, and with the official Google Voice app for the iPhone I’m awfully close to making the complete transition. Wouldn’t it be cool, however, if you didn’t have to use any minutes for calls made with your Google Voice account on the iPhone?
Well, I’m here to tell you it’s possible with a free third-party app called Talkatone. The Google Voice VoIP calling is a feature that’s tucked away in the app a bit, but in my testing I didn’t notice a difference from a normal call when talking to someone that was on a landline. This isn’t just for Google Voice users though… it can also be used to make calls to your contacts who are logged into Google Talk (assuming they are using Gmail Chat and have the video chat plugin installed). You can also go old-school and use this as an instant messenger with your Google Talk friends.
With this article I’m just focusing on the ability to call a phone using Google Voice VoIP access on Talkatone. Just follow the three simple steps below to navigate your way to VoIP bliss.
If you find that this isn’t working for you the developer says you may need to set up the Google Voice integration first:
Here’s a more comprehensive list of Talkatone features:
Not bad, and it’s all free. I did get a glimpse of some iAds in the app, but I only saw them after I had actually been connected with the person I was calling. I didn’t see any ads elsewhere in the app. Since it is free you don’t have much to lose by trying it out.
Talkatone iTunes Link
Thanks Jason!
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
Earlier this week, Google announced a Hangouts update that brings SMS functionality, which is nice but unfortunately comes with a snafu. According to Nikhyl Singhal, who took to Google+ today, there are some issues to be ironed out with Google Voice, and for the time being neither of the two aforementioned Google services will be […]
This article was written on November 16, 2011 by CyberNet.
Google Voice is a great service for having a single phone number ring multiple phones, plus you also get unlimited text messaging for free. A deal like that is pretty hard to beat, but iOS users aren’t able to get the integrated experience without jailbreaking their iPhone. There are some apps, however, that try to make using Google Voice a little more seamless.
The commonality I found between most iOS Google Voice apps is that since there is no public API for Google Voice many of them can feel sluggish if you don’t have a good network connection. This is because they are essentially loading and parsing the desktop version of the Google Voice site with each operation. When you’re trying to send or receive a simple text message the last thing you want to do is wait a minute for the app to finish what it’s doing.
The developer of Think Messenger ($2.99 on iTunes) and Think Dialer ($1.99 on iTunes) decided to take a different route. Instead of using the desktop version he went with the mobile version, which meant everything would be a lot faster, but some limitations would also be imposed. The speed improvements over some of the other apps like GV Mobile+ is rather noticeable to me. It even feels faster than the official Google Voice app released by Google themselves.
You may be wondering why there are two apps instead of just one, but I think that’s what makes me love this integration even more than the others. By separating out the calling and SMS text messaging it feels more like the native iPhone experience, and overall the apps feel a lot more polished than the others I’ve bought. The only thing that feels a little out of place is that the voicemail retrieval is done through the Think Messenger app, which I suspect is because the Think Dialer does not yet support push notifications. With Think Messenger you get native push notifications without any subscription fees, and it works very well.
Think Messenger Screenshots
Think Dialer Screenshots
Think Messenger Homepage ($2.99 on iTunes – Universal iPad/iPhone app)
Think Dialer Homepage ($1.99 on iTunes)
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
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