Rob's Rants

Since making calls via Google Voice requires nothing more than entering a series of digits on your dialpad, there is a whole class of programs available for Windows Mobile, which I skipped in my software review, but which can be adapted for this purpose. Calling Card or Credit Card dialers. Think about it – using a calling card requires essentially the same functions as using Google Voice: dial a phone number, enter a PIN or other ID number, navigate a menu, and finally, dial the number you want to call.

So, if none of the Google Voice software that I identified for Windows Mobile works for you, you can always try to adapt a calling card dialer like Sunnysoft Calling Card or another freeware program. I haven’t tried this yet since I’m still trying to work through the bugs in GVoice Dialer, but it might be worth a shot if Calling Card gives better integration with the built-in address book. There’s a good post from an early Google Voice (Grand Central) adopter at http://technologyinmind.com/?p=107 who uses the Calling Card strategy and likes it.

One of the things I look at periodically is how people are finding my blog — it helps me understand what’s popular and what isn’t. Over the last 30 days though, one set of search terms pops up way more often than I would expect: “what will i look like in 10 years generator.” Now, I admit that I’ve written about my whole house backup generator, but into what search engine are people typing this string to find my page? I mean I’ve tried Google and Bing and I don’t even make the first few pages … and exactly who is searching for some application to help them artificially age a photo of them selves and then gets sidetracked into reading about my 12 KW backup generator. Weird. Here’s the proof:

Top Searches

Yesterday I wrote a quick post about how Google had figured out how to integrate Google Voice voicemail with an existing mobile phone number. I activated it last night – here’s the scoop.

As many people figured, what this does is set up forwarding of your phone to Google Voice. There’s there’s little real integration here. Google simply figured out the dialing strings you need to enter into various carrier’s systems to forward your cellphone to your Google Voice number. And they built a little wizard to guide you through the setup. That’s about it. The only integration seems to be that if the mobile phone forwards a call to Google Voice, and the Google Voice rules are set to ring the mobile phone when that caller calls, it ignores that rule and only forwards the call to other phones on the list.

This setup has pluses and minuses, depending on your carrier. The main drawback is that most carriers charge minutes for forwarded calls, with the exception of Sprint based on their recent announcement. And, your callers will have to endure a long ringing sequence, waiting for your cellphone to forward and then for Google Voice to pick up. But the upside is that you can get Google Voice functionality with people before they clue in and start calling your new number.

My advice is that you should keep a close eye on your minutes if you enable this and get a lot of calls to your cell. Because even if you have your Google Voice set to whatever your carrier calls free numbers you can dial (your Circle, your Faves, etc.) they might still charge minutes for calls forwarded to that number. But, since you can turn this feature off at a moment’s notice, you can just give it a try and see how it works for you.

Like most commuters, I’m pretty hard on the MBTA. So I figured I should write about an incident resulting from my own stupidity and incompenence, where the MBTA’s systems worked well and saved me a bunch of hassle and money.

Basically, a few weeks ago, on one of the first cold days this fall, I grabbed a jacket as I headed out for work. This was the first day of the year that I needed a jacket… I’d like to think this contributed to my boneheaded move on the way home.

I caught the normal Commuter Rail train to Worcester in the afternoon and sat in my normal place in the vestibule of a double-decker car. I threw my jacket on the overhead rack above my head and rode all the way to Grafton. We were 20 minutes late BTW … Anyway, when we stopped a young man who clearly hadn’t ridden the train before slid open the door to the stairs and then looked back at me in a panic – the stairs leading down led only to the chain link fence in between tracks – we had been switched to a different track than normal and the conductor hadn’t adjusted the stairs in our car. So I pointed to the far end of the car where people were getting off and we walked all the way down and made it off the train. I bet you see where this is going … As the train started ro roll out I realized that my jacket was still on the overhead rack. Great.

As I reached the top of the stairs to the parking lot I also realized that my house and car keys were in the pocket of the jacket. Shit.

I called my wife and she agreed to strap our 4 1/2 year-old into the car seat and come rescue me with a spare key to my car. And I started down an MBTA Customer Support odessy that actually worked. Here’s what happened:

1. I got on my cellphone web browser and searched MBTA Customer Service. I found an 800 number and called. (This was at 7:45 PM BTW). I navigated the voicemail and got to “lost items.” A nice woman answered the phone (at almost 8 PM — a real person) and I explained my situation. Good thing #1: real people answered the phone at night.
2. The woman explained that items left on the train, if turned in or found by a conductor would be taken to Lost and Found at South Station. I didn’t believe this, thinking that they must check the train at Worcester, but it turns out that she was absolutely right. She also gave me the phone number and said that if I called and left them a description they would call me back if it was turned in. Good thing #2: the late night Customer Support person gave me correct information immediately.
3. I called the Lost and Found number the woman gave me and left a message as the recording instructed. But I didn’t believe I’d ever see my keys again.
4. Not believing the woman, I got the new keys from my wife and drove to Union Station to see if it might end up there. The night security guy said, “No — all that stuff goes to South Station. And the train already turned and went back to Boston.” So, basically, if I had just waited on the platform in Grafton, the train on which I left the jacket would have come back and I probably could have boarded and grabbed it — but anyway …
5. I went to Lost and Found the next morning at South Station. A very nice young lady helped me and looked to see if anything was turned in to match my description. It wasn’t. But she checked the “log” and lo and behold, my information from the message the previous night was logged. Good thing #3: the information was correct and the voicemail system worked as I was told. The woman also said that it wasn’t uncommon for something found on late night runs by the crew to be turned in late the following day — they often put the stuff in their lockers since Lost & Found was closed at night and turned it in when starting their shift the following day.
6. I didn’t hear from them all day and figured I’d never see my jacket again. On the way home I checked in person and was told that crews might have a day off and it would very likely turn up.
7. Still not hearing anything the next morning, I went and bought a new jacket. Now you know what’s coming right … the next morning I got a call from Lost and Found at South Station. My jacket and keys were turned in. Good thing #4: the honest people at the MBTA actually followed the system and I got my stuff back.

It turns out that the train had been 20 minutes late due to mechanical problems, so when the train made it back to South Station it was taken out of service. The delay in finding my jacket was because it was a maintenance worker who found my jacket after the repairs were done and who turned it in.

So there you go — something at the MBTA worked well. Everyone I spoke to was kind and courteous and gave me correct information. And the system worked to get me my stuff back. See — it’s not all bad!

The other day I wrote about an inconvenience with Google Voice – having Google Voice calls going to multiple voicemail systems. Well, apparently Google is coming through with a fix! This morning on Tech/MobileCrunch I read the announcement that Google had figured out a way to have Google Voice take control of your mobile phone voicemail.

And sure enough, on my own Google Voice screen, I saw this. Note the “Activate Google voicemail for this phone” link next to my mobile number:

Take Control of Mobile Voicemail

This is an interesting development … because this really solves two problems. First, it prevents my mobile from picking up a Google Voice call and taking the message. Second, it also sends messages from people who call my cell number directly into the Google Voice voicemail system. So I get the benefits of transcription, and custom messages, and centralized voicemail management without changing my phone number.

I will take the plunge tonight after I get home from work and see if it works. But it sounds promising!

This is an issue that infuriated me about Vista. Overall I thought it was a good OS and a decent improvement over XP. I never had the stability problems that many reported so I’ve been pretty happy. Except for one thing that annoyed the heck out of me — at random startup intervals Vista completely rearranged the icons on my desktop. And that pisses me off!

I haven’t found a fix that stops Vista from doing it, but I did find a way to quickly repair the damage. Apparently, back in the Windows NT days, Microsoft had a similar problem. And instead of fixing it, they released a simple set of DLLs that add a “Save Desktop Configuration” and a “Restore Desktop Configuration” option to a system right-click menu. Turns out they still work!

The simplest implementation I found is located at http://users.rcn.com/taylotr/icon_restore.html. The web page was last updated in 2003, but who cares — it’s installed and working on my Vista Ultimate machine.

My Dash 3G is currently running Windows Mobile 6.5. The smartphone version — it’s not a touchscreen device. Since I’ve been using Google Voice I wanted a client or dialer on the phone that would seamlessly integrate with the phone’s normal calling function. I’ve tried several to this point and none is really satisfactory.

Making Google Voice Calls

There are really two ways to initiate a Google Voice call — via telephone or via the internet. In the phone-based method, you call your own Google Voice number and then enter your PIN and elect to make a call. You enter the number to dial and Google connects the call. In the internet version, you navigate to the Google Voice web page, log in, enter the number to dial and tell Google which of your phone numbers you wish to use for the call. Google completes the call and then rings your designated phone.

All of the Windows Mobile programs out there use one or a combination of these methods to make Google Voice calls.

GV Dialer

Confirmed 10/26/2009: the GV Dialer author has abandoned the project and left current users hanging out to dry. See this blog post and this screen:

F' You GV Dialer Users!

It’s a shame too, because GV Dialer was probably the best Windows Mobile client out there.
Google doesn’t offer a dialing app for Windows Mobile yet so I was forced to look for 3rd party apps. The first that I found and tried was GV Dialer. And frankly I liked it. GV Dialer was simple: it inserted itself in the native Windows dialer so that whenever you initiated a phone call via any of the normal methods, you would be prompted whether you wanted to use your normal phone or Google Voice (it could also be set to always use one or the other). GV Dialer would then call your Google voice number and automatically enter the digits to work through the Google menu and initiate your call. It was very simple and it worked seamlessly. I liked it. The problem? It seems like the author stopped development abruptly before my trial expired and I can’t activate it to a full license. When you go to their website now, all you get is this:

No GV Dialer For You!!

Based on the blog on the site, I’ll bet that having the iPhone version pulled from the App Store killed any hope of actually making money so the author abandoned it. But it’s a pretty shitty thing to do to not even let people activate versions they already have. So I’m, stuck with a no longer functioning version of a program I liked and I had to start all over again.

iDialer

iDialer is a popular dialer replacement for Windows Mobile, originating (like so many things) on XDA-Developers, but now hosted on its own page. Upgraded or hacked dialers are popular with the touchscreen smartphone people (for reasons totally lost on me — I’ve never seen a single one that really offers much more than the standard dialer, with the exception of the Google Voice Support in iDialer) and iDialer is one of the more popular ones available. The new integrated Google Voice support is particularly cool. The problem of course is that the author wrote it for touchscreen devices only, so it works poorly at best on the Dash 3G. And, like most hacked dialers, it doesn’t replace the native dialer, so you have to start the dialer separately to use it which seems ridiculous to me. Nonetheless, a few users swear by it, even for non-touchscreen phones (see the second post of  this thread for example).

The main advantage of iDialer is that it can use both the dial-up and internet methods of initiating a Google Voice call. In some cases, the internet method is faster since there are fewer digits to input. But that isn’t nearly enough to overcome the limitations of trying to use this touchscreen app on my non-touchscreen device. So I gave up after only one day.

GVoice Dialer

That leaves GVoice Dialer as the client I am currently using. It works similarly to GV Dialer only not as seamlessly. For GVoice Dialer you need to initiate a call by starting the app first. Then you can select a number from your address book and initiate a Google Voice call. This is one extra step than GV Dialer required, but I guess it’s better than nothing. To speed up the process I assigned GVoice Dialer to a speed dial key on my phone so I can start the app quickly and then quickly jump to my address book.

The Ideal Program

What would be the ideal Google Voice client for me? First and foremost it would integrate with the native dialing functionality. That means absolutely no starting of any extra programs before initiating a call. One should be able to browse the native address book or type a number as normal and then be prompted whether to make a normal call of a Google Voice call. The program should also have a blacklist and whitelist, so you could designate numbers to always use Google Voice or never use Google Voice. If someone could do that I’d pay good money for it.

Yes, I changed my theme again. The page menu on the old one wasn’t working for me and it had some real typographic quirks — like superscripts didn’t work, which was a real PITA on some of my posts. Hopefully this one is better and quicker. I have bit of configuring to do, but at first glance, I like it a lot.

Dell Studio 1735

I have a Dell Studio 1735 laptop that I use for both work and personal use. I have it because I had a disaster with my previous laptop on the day after Christmas and I needed a replacement in a hurry. Know how much inventory your average Best Buy has on the day after Christmas? Not much. The Studio was the “best of what was left” and that was 99% of my decision making. Anyway — I can’t really complain about the laptop — it’s been reliable and speedy and the only real shortcoming is the video, but since I don’t play games on it it really isn’t that much of an issue. But this isn’t really about the computer. It’s about the battery. More accurately about the cost of the battery.

The absolutely ridiculous, asinine, bend over and grab your ankles cost of the battery. Dell wants $135.99 for a standard replacement for this battery (see this Dell link). I only paid $899 for the whole laptop in the first place! The new battery costs 15% of the entire laptop. Are they kidding me? And that’s before shipping. It would be one thing if the damn battery worked better than other batteries, but mine only lasted 10 months before it started dying rapidly and only held 60% of it’s full charge. 10 months.

I might even understand if Dell added some kind of extra value to the design of these batteries, but let’s be honest here: Dell doesn’t build batteries. Dell doesn’t even design batteries. Dell contracts the design out to whatever Taiwanese or Chinese or Malaysian or Singaporean shop will do it cheaply. So you’re not buying a “Dell” battery. You’re buying a normal battery with a Dell logo on it. So f’ them. I’m not paying $136 plus shipping for an off-the-shelf battery.

A quick search of EBay for “Dell Studio 1735 battery” turned up 73 results. Prices range from $52 to about $70 for a standard capacity battery. Most including shipping. Because I have some tiny amount of morality left I excluded the real bargain-basement sellers that openly advertised shipping from overseas in packages marked “gift,” as in “wink wink, screw you US customs.” I found a seller that shipped from California for $4.50 more. Placed my order Thursday afternoon, and my battery arrived today, Saturday, by US Mail. Cost me $65.50 shipping included.

And if you put the old and new batteries right next to each other, they look identical with the exception of the silk screened logo and numbers. Same ridges molded in the case, same LED strip and button showing the charge level. Identical as far as I can tell. For 1/2 the cost.

So, if my laptop blows up of catches on fire I’ll be sure to write about it. But I suspect I’ll be fine.

About Dell:

There are two sites on the web that simply infuriate me: NexTag and Experts Exchange. I have cursed the existence of these sites so many times that I can’t count anymore. Search for anything in Google and one or the other of these wretched sites will surely pollute your search results with their incredibly intrusive and utterly useless content.

NexTag is a scourge because if you ever look for technical information about a product by name or model number you will surely get a bunch of shopping search results from them. And the Experts Exchange — well those assholes don’t really want to exchange anything except your money. I have no problem with them charging for their content — but if they do don’t make the questions searchable. Stop polluting my results with teasers about answers you won’t give me.

Well no more. The other day I stumbled on a new Firefox add-in called “Surfclarity.” (See https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12305). It’s a simple and effective whitelist/blacklist application that lets you include or exclude specific domains or pages from Google and Yahoo search results. And it works brilliantly! (I used to use an add-in called “Customize Google” for this but it hasn’t been updated in about a year.) Try it if you have sites which constantly annoy you!