Dear Sergey, (Android + Grand Central + Gmail + Google Talk = Game Changer)

Dear Sergey,

Please, please, please integrate Grand Central (GC) with Android, Gmail, and Google Talk. But before you do that, please get SMS working with Grand Central. The possibilities are endless.

Here's what I want to see:

1. ONE BUCKET for voicemails, emails, SMS, and GTalk
2. Contacts in the GC/Gmail cloud manageable via mobile device and via web (syncs to SIM card)
   
3. Browser only VOIP integrated with GC and GTalk
   
4. Respond to any voicemail with an email, SMS, or GTalk
   
5. Respond to an email via SMS, GTalk, or phone call
   
6. Respond to an SMS message via email, GTalk, or phone call
7. Respond to a GTalk messagevia SMS, email, or phone call
   
8. Forward SMS messages to email or GTalk
9. Forward GTalk messages to SMS or email

Step 1: GET SMS WORKING in Grand Central! It's been over a year (announcement). This seems to be the most popular reason people have refused to adopt Grand Central. I use the service myself, but I can't stop telling people my mobile number until GC can forward the SMS messages.

Redundancy: Why do I have to add the same info into my cell phone, Gmail, and Grand Central individually? Any time a user is entering the same data more than once, you have failed to be as good as you can possibly be.

SIM card: SIM cards should be synced up to the cloud. Drop your cell phone in the lake? No big deal, all your data is in the cloud!

Sergey, you don't need to pay me anything, but please take this idea and RUN WITH IT. Take the engineers that are spending their time doing cutesy stuff and lock them in a room until they get this working. You can lock me in their too ... now that I know how communication should be, it's kind of hard to live without it.

Best regards,
Garrett Woodroof

Mashup Engine - Mozilla Ubiquity

Ubiquity is a product that Mozilla is currently working on which is in its 0.1 alpha stage right now. One might call it a "Mashup Engine" in that it is supposed automatically combine different services and web offerings using a simple interface.

In the video below, for example, the user highlights 5 different craigslist entries and then uses Ubiquity to Google map all 5 addresses. You can also use Ubiquity to copy and paste the map into an email, instead of just inserting a link like you would otherwise.

This idea does have real potential, but Ryan Block (of Engadget fame) hit the nail on the head when he twittered:

Mozilla Ubiquity: amazing concept, but inconsistent micro-commands and a text driven interface means it's geek-set only. But it's a start!

I would love to be able to highlight a string of text that contains a date, and be able to right click it into my Google calendar, but I wouldn't want to have to type [Option]+[Space] "google-calendar-this".

We'll have to see where this goes. I'm thinking this is a cool concept for a Firefox plugin. Enjoy the movie below.

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof

"Hak the Planet" T-Shirts Anyone?

Good news friends ... now you can buy Hak the Planet gear! T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, trucker hats, and more at the Hak the Planet Store. Here's a small sample of what's available:

Best bumper sticker ever!

Hak the Planet Store

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof

Good Bye Phone Book

When was the last time you used the phone book?

I can't remember the last time I used one. It's probably been at least 1.5 years. So why do we let them take up valuable storage space? More importantly, why do we enable phone book companies to chop down countless trees?

Website "YellowPagesGoesGreen.Org" aims to save some of those trees by making it easy to "unsubscribe" from those unsolicited phone book deliveries you get every year. Although individual publishers often have a method to opt out of deliveries for their book, who wants to make 4 different phone calls and spend 20 minutes in voice-jail? YellowPagesGoesGreen.Org does all the leg work for you. You give them your name and address online, and they contact the phone book publishers to opt you out.

Check out the YellowPagesGoesGreen.Org website; it's free, informative, and provides a good service. From their stats, I learned that...

• Each phone book represents roughly $25 worth of advertising ($13.58B / 540 M).
• The production of each phone book consumes almost 1.5 gallons of oil.
  
• One fully developed tree produces only 23 phone books.
  

Of course, if you'd rather make the phone calls yourself, I've verified the following phone numbers...

AT&T Yellow Pages: 800-479-2977
(This works for CA and 19 other states)
(press 0, then 0 again to speak to a real person)
(866-246-0993 should work for most other states)
Verizon Directories: 800-555-4833
(their publisher: Idearc)
Yellow Book: 800-929-3556

In closing, if you use the phone book on a regular basis, okay ... don't opt out of all of them, but do you really need 4 phone books in your drawer? And if you don't use the phone book regularly, what do you have to loose?

Thanks to lifehacker for keeping us informed.

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof

Server-Based Software (by Paul Graham)

It seems that over the last 3-4 years, more and more software is web-based instead of desktop based. We now have Quickbooks Online, Photoshop Express, Zoho, and the whole suite of Google apps (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Calendar, etc). You don't have to download much software anymore if you don't want to.

Although this phenomena seems to me like a fairly recent development, Paul Graham has seen it coming for some time. He wrote an article in September of 2001 titled "The Other Road Ahead":

(This article explains why much of the next generation of software may be server-based, what that will mean for programmers, and why this new kind of software is a great opportunity for startups. It's derived from a talk at BBN Labs.)

Paul was a founder of the first web-based application, Viaweb. Viaweb was started in 1995 and was purchased in 1998 by Yahoo to become Yahoo Store. It is still used today.

In his essay "The Other Road Ahead", Paul speaks of the advantages of using and developing server-based or web-based applications. Now, a lot of what he says is now common knowledge and common practice, but remember, he wrote this essay in 2001, well before these ideals had been adopted.

Here are some quotes (individual excerpts):

When we started Viaweb, hardly anyone understood what we meant when we said that the software ran on the server. It was not until Hotmail was launched a year later that people started to get it.

When we look back on the desktop software era, I think we'll marvel at the inconveniences people put up with, just as we marvel now at what early car owners put up with. For the first twenty or thirty years, you had to be a car expert to own a car. But cars were such a big win that lots of people who weren't car experts wanted to have them as well.

There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about installing new operating sytems. Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words "operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch."

And so you won't ordinarily need a computer, per se, to use software. All you'll need will be something with a keyboard, a screen, and a Web browser. Maybe it will have wireless Internet access. Maybe it will also be your cell phone. Whatever it is, it will be consumer electronics: something that costs about $200, and that people choose mostly based on how the case looks. You'll pay more for Internet services than you do for the hardware, just as you do now with telephones.

The whole idea of "your computer" is going away, and being replaced with "your data." You should be able to get at your data from any computer. Or rather, any client, and a client doesn't have to be a computer.

When you use a Web-based application, your data will be safer. Disk crashes won't be a thing of the past, but users won't hear about them anymore. They'll happen within server farms. And companies offering Web-based applications will actually do backups-- not only because they'll have real system administrators worrying about such things, but because an ASP that does lose people's data will be in big, big trouble.

If this sort of thing interests you, I encourage you to read the whole article (pretty long, but really good).

"The Other Road Ahead" - Paul Graham

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof

Internet Explorer 8 Beta - Now Available

Microsoft recently came out with a beta for Internet Explorer 8. IE8 boasts new features such as...

• Webslices (lets you monitor a section of a website)
  
• Automatic Crash Recovery
• Improved Phishing filter

One cool thing is that you can import your IE7 or Firefox settings (bookmarks, etc). Still missing is the synchronization with Firefox settings. They're hoping, of course, that you'll import your settings and then uninstall FF3 ... in your dreams Microsoft.

Download

Now you Know,
Garrett Woodroof

Remote Control Computing - Live Mesh

Want to access your work computer from home? Your home computer from work? Your desktop pc from your laptop? ... No problem.

Microsoft released this year a new software called Live Mesh. Similar to Remote Desktop, Live Mesh allows one computer to control another remotely. The advantage that Live Mesh has over Remote Desktop is that it doesn't require a terminal server, a static IP, a VPN, or anything: any 2 internet-connected PCs will do (Coming soon to Macs too - source). You can even link up mobile devices at m.mesh.com (and yes, it does work with my Blackberry).


Using your Microsoft Live Account (like your hotmail login for example), you can connect up to 100 different devices to make it easy to control any one device from any other. You also get 5GB of free storage on your "Live Desktop", which is basically your web desktop. You can then access that Live Desktop from any web browser, even if the computer you're using doesn't have Live Mesh installed (I tried both IE7 and Firefox 3). Imagine how handy that could be when you arrive at your meeting to find that you forgot to bring your presentation disk ... oh, wait, I uploaded a copy to my Live Desktop ... we're fine.


I'm still trying to figure out the syncronization options, it seems like there's a lot of potential here to do automatic backups of important files. Of course, if you're going to upload any sensitive data, make sure that you encrypt it first (Truecrypt or Blowfish). Also, you can now use Live Mesh to transfer files directly from one device to another, skipping your Live Desktop if you want. I could see this coming in handy if you're trying to transfer more than 5GB of data.

I've been using Live Mesh for a few weeks primarily to control my media-center pc via my laptop and it's worked pretty well. It doesn't do all that well with playing video, but it does great moving files, launching programs, and even playing music.

If you use multiple pcs, and want to access one from another, why not give Live Mesh a try?

Please share your experiences in the comments.

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof

Foxit PDF Reader

Foxit is a FREE PDF Reader that will view any PDF and doesn't insist on eating up your system resources by running processes in the background. I've been using Foxit for years and I've yet to find a PDF that it can't read. It has a pro version that will let you annotate a PDF with either typing or drawing (like signatures), but the free version works great if you just need to view and/or print PDFs. (versions for Windows, Windows Mobile, and Linux)

Sure, Adobe Reader is free, but it insists on running background processes, which eat up system resources. Why have a background process for a PDF Reader?

If you don't like Foxit for some reason, you might also try Sumatra. Sumatra is not only free, but open source as well. I've seen a few PDFs that don't work in it, but it seems to handle 99% of them flawlessly.

Both Foxit and Sumatra come in portable versions, so they won't even require an install if you'd rather not. (Foxit Portable - Sumatra Portable)

Finally, here's a picture of my inspiration for writing this tonight. I found Adobe Reader eating up ram like a pack of wolves on a sheep stud farm...

Yeah, that's 1.35 gigabytes of ram and I didn't even have a PDF open! Maybe I ought to download and install the latest version (9.0) before I abandon Adobe Reader altogether, but it's not like version 8.0 was a beta or something.

Do you have a favorite PDF reader? Please share your vote in the comments.

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof