முடிஞ்சா நல்லவிதமா நாலு கெட்ட வார்த்தை சொல்லி திட்டி வாய்ஸ் மெயில் விடுங்க. மொதல்ல சின்ன சூப்பர் இளையராஜா பாட்டு வரும் அப்புறம் ஒரு பீப் வரும் அப்புறம் நீங்க பேசிட்டு(திட்டிட்டு) வச்சிடுங்க. முடிஞ்ச உங்க மறுமொழிகள் அங்கே

Guests at the Leeds hotel will be treated to an entertainment centre including a plasma screen, satellite television, DVD and CD player, iPod docking station and even speakers in the bathroom.The entertainment centre is capable of playing Xbox 360, Wii and PS3, all of which will be available to guests. There will also be complimentary Wi-Fi and plug-in laptop access in every room and three digital phones, one by the bedside, one on the desk and one in the bathroom.

The staff are going to be using VOIP phones over the hotel's wireless network; at a saving of £20,000.

The Stairs at the Ellington

(After writing the first paragraph, it doesn't actually sound as good as I thought it would. Nevermind.)

Well anyway, according to Crunch Base, the database of mostly all Web companies, these are Google's acquisitions:

Omnisio, ZAO Begun, DoubleClick, Jaiku, Zingku, Image America,Postini, GrandCentral , PeakStream, FeedBurner, Zenter, Panoramio, GreenBorder, Marratech,Tonic Systems,Trendalyzer, Adscape, Endoxon, JotSpot, YouTube, Neven Vision, Reqwireless, 2Web Technologies, Orion, @Last Software, Upstartle,Measure Map, dMarc Broadcasting, allPAY, bruNET, Phatbits, Akwan Information Technologies, Skia, Android, Dodgeball,Urchin Software, Keyhole,Where2,ZipDash,Picasa, Baidu,Ignite Logic, Sprinks, Genius Labs, Kaltix, Applied Semantics, Neotonic Software,,Pyra Labs, Outride, Deja.

Which, if you ask me, is a lot. What surprises me so much is the fact that Google can still afford state of the art office facilities after acquiring all these companies. They must turn some huge profit though.

Feel free to email me: geektechscott@gmail.com

GrandCentral gives you 'One Number...for Life', a phone number that instead of being tied to a device or a location, is tied to you. You can use GrandCentral to centralize your communication, customize your callers' experience, and make sure you never miss a call you want to take.

A video on how Google Grandcentral works is located here http://www.grandcentral.com/home/one_number. SocialShake works in the same manner but for email.

SocialShake gives you 'One Email...for Life', an email that is also not tied to a specific provider like yahoo, gmail, or even your employer. You can use SocialShake to centralize and organize all your emails regardless if it's work or personal related so you never miss or lose communication with anyone you know.

Similarities:

• GrandCentral allows for one phone number to keep for life, and SocialShake allows for one email address to keep for life.
• GrandCentral sends an incoming call to the phone number you choose depending on who the caller is. SocialShake sends an incoming email to the email address you choose depending on who the email sender is.
• Both allow protecting your privacy by blocking annoying or uninvited users.

Differences:

• GrandCentral is in private beta and is invitation only. SocialShake is in public beta and you can sign up for your free email.
• GrandCentral only allows grouping callers that you know only into the following groups: Family, Friends, Work, and Others. SocialShake is completely customizable and you can create any group or what SocialShake calls a "network".
• GrandCentral is very limited on filtering calls with the only option of filtering by phone number. SocialShake takes the complete Social Graph on how you might know a sender of an email. You can specify how you know the sender of an email by their email address, instant message, social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and etc., phone number, name or address, school, military, and organizations.

We all have very complex lives and we will go through life with many life events. Everyone's information is dynamic and will always change around every turn. SocialShake.com acknowledges this by providing a unique solution for one email address for life.

Related Information:

Google GrandCentral website: http://www.grandcentral.com
SocialShake.com website: http://www.socialshake.com

Majority of the issues revolve around the volume of email that is received and therein lays the problem. Also, all email is treated equal with only one destination, our inbox. With being inundated with email, it’s very difficult and tiresome to manage our inbox effectively especially with sorting between newsletter’s, spam, and relevant email. Many of us have gone to the extreme of even declaring “email bankruptcy” where we delete our entire inbox and start over. Most notable individuals to declare email bankruptcy are Fred Wilson, Jeff Nolan, Lawrence Lessig, and Michael Arrington.

SocialShake.com’s email service addresses many of these issues and has a very unique solution to use email.

The first is by associating the relationship of how we know senders of an email. This is the “Social Graph”. This relationship might be through work, an organization, military, school, where one lives, a phone or cell phone number, or even through the internet (email, instant message, or social networks).

Next is to group how we know potential senders into networks (groups of people). An example network can be “work”. Then you want to assign your Social Graph to this network. An example on how this can be accomplished is by creating a work filter where you specify the company name and point it to your work network. This now allows us to classify senders and any incoming email to your SocialShake email account will be from your work and any other networks you assign.

The final step is to filter your email based on your networks. This is accomplished by taking the same principles behind the way Google GrandCentral works. Instead of having one phone number that rings all of your phone numbers, is to have one email that forwards to all your emails. All you need to do is add an email address where you want SocialShake to forward an email to. While adding an email address you specify which networks can send an email to you. If the sender is not in your network by the way you know them through your Social Graph, SocialShake will then look at your other email addresses and checks with those networks. If SocialShake cannot find an email address to forward to, the sender simply receives a courtesy email informing them that they aren’t within your Social Graph with alternatives on how they can email you.

Now we finally have an email that will group senders on how we know them through your Social Graph, prioritize email and direct email to the appropriate email address such as our work, personal or any other email which will reduce and eliminate spam. Plus with SocialShake it will be the last email address you will need to be known by!

Related urls:

http://www.socialshake.com

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/07/01/100117059/index.htm?postversion=2007070213

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/23/a-crisis-in-communication/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052402258_pf.html

http://valleywag.com/tech/trends/declaring-e+mail-bankruptcy-254608.php

GrandCentral is a service that gives you a virtual phone number that can be pointed at one or more real phone numbers.  If someone phones the GrandCentral number, all the real phones get the call.  There are a lot of extra features, too, like e-mail notification of calls, web voice-mail, switching which phone number you're using while a call is underway, and more.  But you probably can't get it because it's in an invitation-only beta period.

Unfortunately, GrandCentral has been "in beta" for quite a while now.  I got my account in May 2007.  I never seriously used it because I wasn't sure it would last, and I also wasn't sure I wanted to be quite that easily reached.  But I saw a tip on Lifehacker the other day about it and gave it a try.  It turns out that you can call anybody from your phone for free using GrandCentral.  Just put the person's phone number in your address book and you'll see a Call button.  Click it, and GrandCentral first calls you.  When you answer, it announces that's it's placing your call, and it calls the number you selected.  It works perfectly.  I don't know whether this works for calls outside the US, but I doubt it.

This is handy for me to call the office when I'm working from home.  I prefer to use my home phone instead of my cell phone due to coverage issues.  But our office is a long-distance call, so I use the 800 number.  Which connects me to the receptionist who I have to keep bothering in order to connect to the right extension.  Now with GrandCentral I call the other employee's direct-dial number from my home phone for free, and don't have to take up the receptionist's time.

This trick does require that the person be in your GrandCentral address book, which is a bit of a pain.  The Lifehacker tip was about a Firefox extension that would let you make this kind of call to any number on any web page, but the extension didn't work for me and caused some other problems in Firefox, so I removed it.  If I could upload a file of phone numbers to the address book this wouldn't be much of a hassle, but I can't.  GrandCentral makes you enter each contact individually on the web.

Which brings me to my complaints.  GrandCentral now belongs to Google, and they don't seem to be doing anything with it.  It's not integrated with any other Google services (like my GMail contact list).  It's got an awful flash-heavy user interface that makes every navigation step slow and difficult.  And it doesn't have any of Google's normal thoughtful touches (like being able to upload an address book).

I can't see how anybody can make money with the GrandCentral service, at least as it now exists, which may be the problem.  Perhaps it's almost an orphan product inside Google.  It wasn't even mentioned at the Google IO meeting.  Too bad, because it can be really useful.  I guess I'll use it while I wait to see what Google does with it.

Features are -

1. Automatic login to your GrandCentral account
2. Hover your GC number on the toolbar for the most recent call
3. Double click your GC number to redial the last call
4. Quickly access your voice messages, address book, and call log by right clicking the toolbar
5. Click any phone number to place a call

New message notifications and new missed call notifications might make it into the future release.

You can get Click to call here.

[via That Smith]

A quick Google search for "cancel vonage" shows that my blog post is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of blog posts, forum posts, email list posts, and all other forms of web communication which detail the drudgery that is attempting to cancel Vonage.

Why would a company go to so much trouble to try to keep customers who clearly do not want their service? Is their cash flow so bad, that they simply must have the revenue? I was amazed about a year and a half ago when I read the news that Vonage couldn't sign up new customers. Even more amazing was the fact that not a day goes by that their damned commercial is on my TV or a week goes by that I don't get some form of direct mail piece advertising their product. Apparently, somehow the news never made it to Vonage's offices. Not one aspect of their business model or customer service strategy seems to have changed since it became clear that they were fleecing customers.

The money must be great, because they still are around and seemingly thriving. With the ubiquitous nature of the cell phone and with cell plans getting cheaper every day, what does Vonage offer that's not available via a service like GrandCentral? How can we more effectively spread that word that Vonage is a Faustian bargain?

Michael Arrington has a great post up at TechCruch arguing that voicemail is dead.  He makes a compelling case.  Consider this, voicemail fans:

It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.

Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally - let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.

How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”

Arrington is on to something here.  I can't tell you how many times I've skipped listening to messages from certain people who shall never be named here because of their predictable messages.  All they're really saying? Call me back.

Arrington mentioned one service called GrandCentral (recently acquired by Google) which is making voicemail more useful.  I've played around with the service a bit and it is really cool (and free).  Slate has written a piece on the service that lays out my favorite features:

It screens calls with ruthless efficiency, forcing anyone whom it can't identify (through caller ID and your address book, which it can import from Microsoft Outlook or Gmail) to say who they are. It then tells you who's calling so you can decide if you want to answer. GrandCentral also blocks calls from known phone spammers; it can even play an uncannily realistic "you have reached a number that has been disconnected" recording for telemarketers or folks you just plain don't like.

Despite the fact that services like these can make voicemail more bearable, I still think the days of voicemail are numbered.  Maybe I'll start a Facebook group to help move things along.

Yes, we are. Many of us have an office, home, and a mobile phone. And as more of us gives up our land line, we only give out our mobile numbers. I've been reachable at the same mobile number for around 15 years. Being reachable via phone is a given.

I was intrigued with Google's announcement that they would provide free phone numbers to San Francisco's homeless community via GrandCentral.

"Through our Project CARE initiative, GrandCentral is providing, free of charge, a local phone number and voicemail box to members of the homeless community in San Francisco."

GrandCentral provides users with a single number, voicemail as a service, and more. Since the Google acquisition last July, GrandCentral has been in private beta. My guess is that when they're ready, Grand Central will be available for around $15 a month for the general public. The SF homeless community will continue to benefit from this service for free. GrandCentral cites the benefits as:

"Project CARE (Communications and Respect for Everybody) recognizes the desire for those in need to get back on their feet and begin a new life. An essential element to that proposition is a consistent and reliable phone number - a place where anyone (family, friends, social workers, health care providers, potential employers, etc.) can leave you a message.

No longer will the pay phone at the local shelter be the only way to reach a homeless client. Whether applying for a job, waiting for medical test results, or trying to get in touch with family, Project CARE provides homeless clients with link to the real world and an ability to connect."

Wow- free email addresses have always been available, yet offering free phone numbers to the homeless community is news worthy. When it comes to reaching someone, is voice communication still preferred? I think so.

Mary Joe Foley points out that Bill Gates has been referring to Echoes in his speeches recently. Echoes was incubated by Microsoft Israel Research’s Corporate Vice President Moshe Lichtman and is being developed by Microsoft’s Israeli Strategic Development Center, Foley reports. According to one of her sources, the new platform will be able to:

• Syncs Address book contacts over the air.
• Ensure that IM messages work seamlessly with SMS.
• Windows Live Messenger contacts get local numbers.
• Voice calls from Messenger on PC to mobiles.
• Some sort of presence.

Skype, GrandCentral and others already deliver many of these services. From that perspective there is nothing new here, except for the need of being tied to Microsoft's platforms. Echoes' outlines Microsoft's biggest challenges: the inordinate amount of time they spend on developing products that are either a platform or a suite forces them to make too many compromises. One can't blame the company whose DNA is Windows (Platform) & a Suite (Office.) This is a malady which makes them unable to move ahead and define the future.

Additionally, there are those who embrace the utility of a soft phone.  A soft phone is an application that runs on your computer and allows you to send or receive phone calls, normally through a microphone headset.  Skype is probably the most well known soft phone, but a competitor of theirs called Gizmo5 (formerly known as Gizmo Project) can be combined with GrandCentral to give you soft phone capabilities.

This Gizmo/GrandCentral combination is made possible because of the two services' use of SIP, a standard protocol for VoIP communication.  Using Gizmo and GrandCentral together will give you absolutely free calling inbound and outbound to your callers, absent of using any cell minutes or using a landline.

Follow this hands-on guide to enable Gizmo5 to be added as a phone in your GrandCentral set up.

First and foremost, you must have a GrandCentral account set up and ready.  Secondly, download Gizmo5 from their website and create an account. Gizmo5 is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Nokia Internet tablets.

Now that you have your two accounts on GrandCentral and Gizmo5 set up, it's time to integrate them.  Log in to your GrandCentral account and click on the "Settings" tab.  In the Phones group, you can see where you have your various phones that GrandCentral forwards your calls to, according to your preferences.  It is here that we will put in our Gizmo5 'phone number' for GrandCentral to use.

To find that Gizmo5 phone number, launch Gizmo 5 and under the Account menu, click on "My Profile".  In this window, shown on the right, you'll see your SIP phone number.  Write down this number, minus the 1 at the beginning and excluding everything after the @ sign.

Now, go back to GrandCentral and click "Add/Edit Number".  In the dropdown, choose Gizmo, type in the SIP number found in Gizmo5, and assign a name of your choosing to the entry.  Lastly, click "Save" to commit the change.

Now, whenever you have Gizmo5 running on your computer, you have the ability to recieve phone calls without using your cell minutes or tying up a landline.  All voice packets are carried over the Internet from GrandCentral to wherever your logged into Gizmo5 from.

Nevertheless, here are 11 websites that you might actually bookmark and go back to at least more than twice. Who knows? You may even bookmark and use one or two of these on a regular basis!  So Here is your latest weekly List:

RateMyDrawings Might be a good one to try out with the kids or maybe you might want to use it yourself.

Yapta This one's timing might be better than ever. Track airfares and save money!

BossBitching I had no idea there were sooo many bad bosses out there! How did they get the jobs in the first place?

Want to access your pc from your phone? Then check out Soonr Over 600 handsets supported, including all major feature phones and smartphones.

Whenever Google buys something it must be good, so maybe that is the case with Grand Central With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it. Cool!

How bout free wake up calls? Ok I know we all don't travel that frequently, but still good to know about Wakerupper Because it does more than just wake up calls.

I know I could use something like this ProQuo which stops junk mail and protects you from ID theft!

This company I could have used back in December Mobical allows you to securely backup your mobile data for free.

Here's a quick way to send files, pics, vids and music to your cellphone with Beam it up Scotty

Now is a good time to be watching where your money is going, try this free app out Mint

Lastly, this site lets you funk things up a bit Be Funky

This event should encourage all those of us who work on the web to build redundancy into your web-centric work life.  It's no secret that our internet and web infrastructures are vulnerable to many threats whether they be man-made or occurrences of nature.  Taking simple measures can help ensure you stay productive and in contact should some part of your work infrastructure go down.

For enterprises, allowing people to work from alternate locations (including home) is conducive to disaster recovery.  In the case of this GrandCentral outage, users of this service should simply give all important contacts an alternate number to reach them in case of GrandCentral being unavailable.

Regarding the GrandCentral outage, I don't understand what all the disappointment and agony was about regarding this otherwise very useful web service.  First of all, this "outage" was on a Sunday morning for a few hours.  Secondly, GrandCentral is a free service that gives its users unmatched value every day.  Finally, this is a beta service and if you print your GrandCentral number on your business cards and use it as the lifeline of your business, you should have been forewarned that hiccups in the service will occur.  Granted, GrandCentral was acquired by Google and therefore people have an expectation of uptime and reliability, but please don't forget this is a 'beta' service and just like Gmail or Google Documents, outages can occur.

My suggestion: reflect on your daily working life and see where you can build in a back-up plan.  Whether it's storing your information in an offsite backup service or having an alternate way of getting online should your DSL go out, your business will likely depend on your ability to recover from future unknown outages.

(photo credit: Flickr User edkohler)

Technorati Tags: O'Reilly Radar, Jessie Robson, Skype, GrandCentral, technology, outage

Fast forward to now where everyone is being found or followed. The proliferation of personal, web-based telephony applications like GrandCentral, Ifbyphone and GotVMail have certainly helped. Or at least done what their predecessors - over-featured key systems - perhaps couldn't.

Forward even faster and like we see so often, as soon as the masses start to 'get' something, we change the game. The beauty of Find Me apps is that when properly managed, they do just that. They take the finding and following out of the equation for the caller. But there's a hitch. The call receiver has to program and then intermittently manage the application. Garbage in, garbage out. Don't tell your assistant where you'll be at five, they probably won't find you. Neither will your phone.

Enter presence-based find me solutions. These come in a few flavors. There are those where you can log in and out so the application knows which 'rules' to follow. And now there's 'touch' based presence. Haven't typed on your Mac (or PC) in a while, your phone will figure you're away and your find me rules will kick in. Fonality introduced this feature this week and others have it. Just don't expect your friends to understand it for a while....

1)  Ring the phones you want, when you want, from the callers that you want and lets you ring (or not ring) certain phones depending on who is calling.

2)  Send the voicemails from all of your phones to email or have them sent as texts to your phone, automatically.

3)  Record different voicemail greetings for different callers or groups of callers.

4)  Import all of your Outlook, Gmail, etc...contacts.

5)  Record phone calls (with permission of both parties).

6)  Switch phones in the middle of a call, like when your phone is running out of batteries.

7)  Call anyone from your contacts over the internet.

You can even put a button on your website or blog that lets people call you from the internet (and you can have them go straight to voicemail if you want...and then get their messages through email).  The biggest downside is that GrandCentral has to give you a new phone number through which to do all of this stuff - you can pick from a range of options, but nevertheless a restricted list of options. 

At the moment, GrandCentral is being run by Google on an invitation-only basis.  If you are interested in getting an invitation.  Send me an email to newtomefeedback@gmail.com with a link to a website featuring something you think might be new to me and I'll send you an invitation.

Please note that I don't work for Google or GrandCentral and if you have been reading my blog, you know that I am not very technologically savvy.