Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
August 10th, 2010
I have had a Google Voice number from before it was Google Voice, from back in the Grand Central days. I have my Google Voice number set up to ring to a free inbound Internet phone number through SipGate. With my Internet phone “modem” I now have a free “home” phone number with outbound calling provided by Google Voice. I’m not sure how long this will last but I’m enjoying it for now.
So Google Voice has a lot of positives if you choose to get your own Google Voice number, including the ability to dial out from it to the US and Canada for free. (Technically, it dials your phone and then connects you to your caller.) For the purposes of this review I’m looking at how Google Voice compares to its main voicemail competitor, YouMail.
Visual voicemail is a method of accessing voicemail that is similar to email. In other words, your messages come in, they show up on a list, and you get to pick and choose which one you hear first. Traditional voicemail means you have to sit through your friend’s long-winded rambling message just to get to the message you really want to hear.
It’s really crucial to understand there are two levels of Google Voice service. One is where you get your own Google Voice number assigned. (This will give you the ability to call out with that number.) Two is where you do not get your own Google Voice number but instead tie your cellphone number to use Google Voice’s visual voicemail services. Very important! When signing up for Google Voice, you MUST ask for a free phone number immediately or you will have to pay for an “upgrade” later at the cost of $10. You can always tie your cellphone voicemail to Google Voice even with a Google Voice number, so it’s always best to choose to get the free number when signing up. (Google purposefully makes this very confusing, it seems, so choose carefully when selecting which path upon signup.)
If you don’t want a Google Voice number, and just visual voicemail, then YouMail might also be a good option for you.
I recently started using YouMail because I wanted visual voicemail on my cellphone and needed an alternative to Google. Google Voice offers visual voicemail for cellphone numbers, but when I originally tried it, my number via my provider (Sprint/Nextel) was not set up for “conditional call forwarding” and I could not get it to work. When I heard about YouMail, I decided to try that instead. Somehow they way YouMail does forwarding through your phone’s settings vs. dialing in with a code as Google instructed works for me.
I also felt like I’d like to keep my cellphone voicemail separate from my Google Voice…if just because I’m sick and tired of Google encroaching on every aspect of my life! Google, youire great, but there is too much of a good thing. So I like to try alternatives.
Here is a look at the pros and cons of both:
The big difference is in transcriptions. YouMail offers its visual voicemail service for free, but unfortunately charges for transcriptions. Google Voice offers free automated transcriptions, but they are generally known to suck to the point of being useless. YouMail decided to scrap automated transcriptions in favor of pushing a “premium” transcription service that utilizes live human beings to clean up the transcriptions.
For business people, paying for YouMail’s much more accurate premium service is probably worth the monthly cost. For personal use, I’m not so sure it’s worth it. I thought I might miss having my visual voicemails transcribed in YouMail because I’ve had them transcribed so much in Google…but surprisingly, I don’t miss it much. When it comes to my friends, I’m really more interested in being able to pick and choose the order in which I play my messages. If YouMail had a really cheap automated transcription option with their “pro” package I might upgrade, but I’m not motivated enough to pay a premium for human-edited transcriptions. Others, however, swear by the premium transcription service as a major timesaver.
Interface. Google’s website interface is much better. YouMail’s is covered in big graphic ads if you are a free customer. I don’t mind advertising supporting my free services, but did YouMail really need to stick a big graphical block in the top middle of my home page? However, I much prefer YouMail’s interface when it comes to my Blackberry app. It’s simpler, cleaner, and will even show pictures of my contacts. Google scrunches everything up so that it’s too small to scan easily.
Extras. Google Voice focuses on the basics. Voice mail. Transcription. They don’t offer any “fun” frills. In fact, they removed them when they took over Grand Central. I remember Grand Central had all sorts of neat options, such as the ability to change the ringer that people hear when calling you. That’s all gone now. You get only the most basic of options now. You can use your phone to record a new greeting at Google Voice. You can even have different groups be routed to different phones (if you have the full Google Voice number) or messages. But you can’t easily customize beyond that.
YouMail, on the other hand, is a lot more fun. You can easily upload an MP3 file to be your greeting. Their automated system will also say caller’s names if you choose their “SmartGreeting.” There’s an entire community of YouMail users who submit user-created MP3 greetings that you can use on your phone. It’s extremely easy to swap out greetings and you can even assign them to individual callers.
Using YouMail, I was able to easily upload an MP3 greeting I made with the Old Spice Voicemail Generator.
All in all, I think YouMail is a slightly better service when it comes to visual voicemail services and if you truly need top-notch transcription, I hear their service is stellar. However, Google Voice is also an excellent visual voicemail service, and its transcription, though lousy, might save enough time to be worth the mistakes it brings. (One time I had Google Voice identify a caller as “Charlie Sheen.”)
Since both basic services are free, it can’t hurt to try them, and see which one you like the best.
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July 18th, 2010
I just got an email from China saying that someone in China was looking to trademark my domain name and register a number of variations on that name. I’m always suspicious of these kinds of emails and so I looked it up. Sure enough, it’s a scam. They send these letters to try to sell people on domain names they don’t need at ridiculous prices. For more information, see:
http://www.firetrust.com/en/blog/chris/domain-name-scams
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June 29th, 2010
I like Hulu for its online streaming video, but one of the main reasons was that it was free and had very brief commercials. Unfortunately, getting current episodes in any sort of timely fashion (and keeping up with them before they expire) has not been the easiest on Hulu.
Hulu is “solving” this problem by adding a $9.99 monthly paid service. The main “benefit” is that you can access entire seasons of many TV shows. Problem is, you still have to watch ads, and Netflix trounces Hulu when it comes to movie availability (and lack of ads). Judging from the comments posted on this Yahoo news article, the reception to Hulu’s new Plus service is not just negative, but downright hostile. As one commenter said succinctly:
Hulu actually has employees with business degrees and they come up with this?
Really?
Really?
What Hulu isn’t getting is that they are not just in competition with Netflix, but DVRs and torrents. I’d consider paying $9.99/month for no advertising and a huge selection along with high quality streaming, but I certainly wouldn’t at Hulu’s current level of service. They are promising HD quality for the extra fee…which would be enticing were it not for the fact that half the time my Hulu videos are as jerky as webcams were back in 2002, and I often manually lower the video quality to try to improve the streaming experience.
It remains to be seen whether Hulu’s new Plus service will take off. In the meantime, if you want to try another free streaming video site, check out Crackle. They have a quirky selection and actual real staff members respond to your questions in the comments.
One thing that will be going the way of the do-do eventually with all of this online streaming will be the hard copy DVD rental. Red Box and Blockbuster watch out!
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June 28th, 2010
Google has their own operating system that is being developed for Netbooks – call it Chrome OS or Chromium, your choice. I downloaded a version bootable by USB, developed by a very smart 17-year-old. With bootable USB in hand, I was able to get Chrome OS running on my laptop. Here are my first impressions:
Basically, Chromium is Google’s Chrome browser set up as an operating system. When you boot up and login, you are put into Chrome. From there, you can use Google Apps to get your work done via the “cloud.”
There is no way to save things to the hard drive or install native applications. It’s designed that way. You have to have Internet access to do anything.
This might be fine, but in my first attempt to use the OS, it did manage to find my wifi network, but froze on the authentication. It also didn’t seem to like my external mouse much. Ultimately, the system hung and I shut it down. I’ll play with it more later.
I’d say, this is a promising “lite” operating system, if just to have on USB for those times when your hard drive dies and you just want to login to the Internet to check your email. Whether it will be robust enough for daily use remains to be seen.
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December 16th, 2008
“Net neutrality” is the idea that the Internet remains free and open and will not discriminate on access based on dollar signs. In simplistic terms, this means that you can access my Green Tech Girl website just as easily as you can Microsoft’s. With the advent of video on demand, many companies are looking for ways to deal with increased bandwith consumption, and some of these plans seem to be crossing the line into a bifurcated Internet.
Google has recently come under fire for a plan perceived to threaten net neutrality, though they claim there is confusion over the matter. (Is caching content the same as limiting bandwidth?) While Obama has been quoted as saying he supports net neutrality, considering his major flip-flip on FISA in favor of the telecom companies, we cannot rely on his administration to protect the people’s interests against the telecoms.
Ultimately, a free and open Internet will always be at risk as long as big corporations own the pipes. I remember reading a long time ago an idea that individual users could create their own worldwide “Internet” via peer-to-peer wifi, thus bypassing the big corporations altogether. Will this ever come to pass? Perhaps. Meanwhile, we still need to remain vigilant on the issue of net neutrality. It will be up to the genius of individual developers to come up with a viable Internet that does not require corporate backing or control.
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October 22nd, 2008
The green trend has now hit web browsers – you can download the free Flock Browser Eco-Edition here. The browser comes pre-set with links and feeds from various eco-websites, and they give 10% of the search engine proceeds from the browser use to an environmental organization voted on by users.
I downloaded the browser and installed it (it does come in a version for Linux), but I’m not sure if I would use it that much. Some of the eco-trendy sites that come pre-loaded I don’t like particularly much. The one that wins my top “Eco-Irony Award” would be Sprig, which claims to be about the environment while pushing mindless consumerism. (No, you don’t really need to get a new pair of designer expensive “environmentally friendly” shoes when the ones you already have work just fine.) Ecorazzi, which focuses on green celebrities, seconds my list of mindless eco-trendy consumerist crap.
So while I feel that the idea behind Flock’s eco-browser is a good one, I am personally not thrilled about the trend towards corporatey, consumerist websites that play off the green trend but are in reality more of the same consumerism that got us into this environmental mess in the first place.
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February 26th, 2008
I’m always interested in new ways of doing business that don’t involve making new stuff. Here’s one interesting application of the Internet: Setting up sites where people can swap goods instead of throwing them away or purchasing new products. This lends itself quite well to things like books and CDs.
One such site that I am currently checking out is Bookins.com, which gives you points for each book you offer for trade and then charges a flat $4.49 shipping fee for books you receive. (You don’t have to pay to ship books, just to receive.)
Of course, you could just use your local library too. But some books are good to keep around as reference. And yes, we all look toward the day when books will be entirely electronic instead of made from paper…and then sadly we’ll have the book publisher equivalent of the RIAA on our asses for book file sharing. For that reason alone, perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I’d like to keep paper books around.
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