Category Archives: google

Pretty Cool Use for Google Voice

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For most of the time I’ve had a Google Voice number, I didn’t really know what to use it for. Friends and family already have my cell phone number, and having to ask everyone to change is just too much of a PITA. So I kind of just used it as an alternate (for selling on Craigslist, online ordering, etc).

My wife and I rarely use our home phone number for anything anymore. Therefore we didn’t realize that the phone was dead for more than a couple days a few weeks ago. It’s a VOIP phone, and the router needed to be reset. Hmmmm. Could we have missed any important calls during the outage?

Looking into it further, my VOIP provider (T-Mobile at Home) lets you set a forwarding number in case the phone signal can’t be reached. After some further research, you can also set it to forward to a number if no one picks up. Sooooo. I set the forwarding numbers to my Google Voice number, and then turned off that dinosaur we call an answering machine.

During the day, when we’re at work, I put Google Voice on do not disturb. That way the forward automatically goes into voice mail instead of ringing my cell phone.

So for any odd calls we get during the day, that usually used to end up sitting unnoticed on our answering machine, I get an e-mail transcript. I can e-mail the transcript to my wife if it’s for her, or deal with it if it’s for me. And manage the messages on my phone or from any computer.

Just some extra productivity dealing with missed calls to the home phone.

It’s also nice if we’re out to see who’s trying to reach us at home.

I’m debating switching my cell phone’s voice mail system over to Google Voice too. Although never perfect, I love the transcription. I rarely have to ever listen to the voice mails. I get the gist from the writing.

Google Buzz Update

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Just like I’ve flip flopped many times with Twitter, I have with Buzz too. This time I made a final decision. I’m finished with it. I did not like the UI one bit. I didn’t know anyone personally who used it. And it doesn’t look like the “active” user base is growing. Active meaning people who use it, not just stream other feeds into it.

I’ve “decommissioned” my Buzz profile. Unfollowed everyone, etc. It’s not for me. I would delete it entirely if it wasn’t tied directly to the Google Profile. I’d like to keep my Google Profile, so I’ll just keep a blank Buzz account open until they kill off Buzz like they did Wave.

Where I can, I’m trying to go to all of the social media, bookmarking, etc. sites that I’ve tried over the years to delete my account. Just kind of to clean up any outdated profiles of mine from the web. It seems only about half of sites allow you to delete a profile/service. So abandoned ones will always remain I guess.

Since I mentioned Twitter… I stopped trying to make it work for me, but also found probably one of it’s best uses. Niches. I’ve become more and more a fan of MMA, and since MMA isn’t mainstream, Twitter is a great source of information from the fighters and MMA news outlets. I’ve stopped following a lot of the “gurus” (social media, marketing, etc.) as Twitter became a forum for a lot of them to be too self-promotional. So now I follow a handful of friends and associates, some news sources, and good MMA sources.

Bye, Bye Google Wave

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Google announced today that they are no longer developing Wave. I saw it coming. No one I know uses it. I’ve poked around on it before, and it’s clunky, leaving  me with the “what the heck do I do with this” feeling.

I wrote about this before:
http://mattsoreco.com/2010/02/google-buzz-will-i-use-it-why-i-dont-use-wave.html

Buzz is next. It’s useless. I’ve tried several times to use it more, and each time I became more annoyed with it. So why bother? Also like Wave, no one I know personally uses it. I tried following some interesting people, but Buzz isn’t the format I prefer to read people’s opinions (blogs are).

I wrote about this before too:
http://mattsoreco.com/2010/02/does-google-get-social.html

Google has had some big misses lately.

C25K – W8D3 Done

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I’m back on my every other day schedule. This morning’s run was a little lackluster. I think the CardioTrainer app worked itself out this time and was reporting the correct distance/time/pace. I believe having Google Latitude on at the same time was throwing it off. I think Google Latitude was also killing my battery, but that’s another story.

I ran 2.78 miles in a little over 28 minutes (10:14) pace. I’d like to get that pace down under 10. Now it’s on to the last week. 30 minute runs are next.

I alluded to this in my last post. I’m kind of bored with the distance runs. One weekend day a week will be devoted to sprinting and other fast interval training runs. And I’ll just do 2 days a week of distance. My goal is to work myself up to 40 minutes at a 10 minute per mile pace. I think I’m going to simply add 2 minutes a week until I reach 40, then work on my pace. Hopefully the sprinting will take care of some of it.

Kindle for Android

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I downloaded the Kindle for Android a few weeks ago and am just now kicking the tires. I’ve ordered a book, and I’m about half way through.

I didn’t know what to expect regarding the ease of reading on the small G1 screen. I’m half-way through a light read, and the screen size is not an issue at all for me. Neither is the mechanics of the app.

There were some e-book readers on the market already, like Aldiko, but the book selection stunk. Kindle has a huge selection of books, and ordering (and getting them on the device) could not be any easier.

I give this one two thumbs up. I will definitely be reading more books on my G1.

New Google Webmaster Tools Report

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It looks like Google pushed out an enhancement to their queries report in their Webmaster Tools. It now gives the ability to enter a date range, and it shows the number of impressions along with the click throughs (and click through rate). And each query has a dropdown link to see the positions the term showed up in. There is also a graph that trends query volume and click through volume over time.

If you use Google Webmaster Tools, definitely check out this new feature. It’s great for SEO!

Good News, I’m Using Buzz. Bad News, It’s a Complete Mess

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Don’t knock it until you try it. Right?

So I learned a week ago how to “hide” people I follow in Buzz from my Google Reader, which up until that point was the reason I refused to use Buzz.

A week in, there are more frustrations. It’s a huge mess.

First, manually hiding in Reader everyone I follow in Buzz is a nuisance. It’s necessary because otherwise, Buzz and Reader are duplicates and the noise is maddening.

Today I learned that all of my shared Reader items that got posted to Buzz had commenting turned off. That’s because you have to manually allow others to comment. You have to allow each and every person you follow in Buzz to this list. Ok, my first issue with Buzz is a preference (sort of, although it should be an OPTION). But this issue is a flaw. Major flaw. I won’t maintain this. Too much work. Instead there needs to be a “allow anyone to comment” option.

I apologize to everyone who can’t comment on my wonderful Reader shared items. Please mail your complaints to:
Matt Soreco
c/o Google Buzz Complaint Team
Mountain View, CA

My other frustrations:

  • When I’m typing a reply, sometimes the window is bumped down as I’m typing. I assume it’s because something new above was added.
  • The (new) count is useless. It’s hard to distinguish what’s new once you click on it.
  • I can’t figure out the @ reply feature. This might be user error. :-) Although I see others having the same difficulties.
  • All of the people I follow in Buzz are now in my contacts. Which is ok, but now my Android phone contact list is out of control. I know you can filter by contact with phone number, but you can’t by contacts with phone number and/or e-mail address (which is what I want).
  • I hate that it’s tied to Gmail. I hate that my sent items becomes cluttered with Buzz stuff.

The list is growing. I wrote about Resistance and Productivity before. I see Buzz as having a lot of nuisances that cause resistance. For me, these have to get worked out. I’ll bail. Like I did on other Google social media efforts.

Google Bookmarks Update

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Twice I wrote about the untapped potential of Google Bookmarks, and the limitations:
http://mattsoreco.com/2008/10/my-google-wishlist.html
http://mattsoreco.com/2008/10/bookmark-site-id-like-to-see.html

For the longest time, it seemed to have been built but left dormant. I love it, but wished they’d develop it more.

They updated the service today. Now you can create lists and share them.

It seems they worked on the social angle. I still want them to work on the ubiquity angle. I want my Chrome bookmarks, Android browser bookmarks, and Google bookmarks all to be the same. I want to be able to add a bookmark via e-mail, text, or Android app. How’s about it?

At least I know they haven’t forgotten about Bookmarks. I can continue dreaming.

Another Google Reader Annoyance

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Fresh of my last post on why I refuse to use Buzz becaues it’s integrated with Reader (without the choice), I was reminded of another annoyance of Reader.

I like the recommended feeds feature, but once I say “no thanks,” that should be it. For good. Instead it keeps constantly recommending me the same feeds over and over and over. Enough!!!

It’s making the discovery of really good and NEW blogs slow and hard. I hardly use it because of this.

Also, I liked the “popular” feature that they had a few weeks ago. But they switched it back. They should have both.

Also, another thing about recommendations is that sometimes the feeds are too similar to what I’m already subscribed to. Lately I’ve been going through my feeds and only keeping one or two similar blogs. For example, both Mashable and Techcrunch cover the same things, so subscribing to both creates a lot of duplicate info. Adding more similar feeds would create even more duplicates. So my new motto is just follow one (or two at most) and trust that they cover what I need.

This is also why I’ve stopped following some people. Some people’s habits were to share similiar articles from different sources. I don’t need to read that Google Buzz launched from 10 different sources. One is enough thank you.