Tag Archives: google

Use Google Reader as a delicious.com alternative

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Google Reader has only recently added social features (following, liking, people searching) but I’ve found them to be amazingly powerful.

Consuming information

If you use Google Reader, you likely consume a lot of information through it via RSS feeds. Everything from news (BBC, NYTimes), sports, humor (ICHC, xkcd) to photos from your Flickr contacts, Twitter mentions and so on. Reader is one of my most important online web applications.

Consolidated contacts

And to pile on even more Google fanaticism (friends in college thought I worked for Google), all of my friends and family contact information are stored in Google Contacts. The best part about this is that my Gmail, Google Voice, iPhone and Address Book contacts are all pointing to the same place: Google. Some argue that’s a bad idea, but that’s another discussion. Point being: there’s no need for me to try and messily sync lots of contacts across multiple sites.

Google Shared items

Since Google now has public pages to display your ‘Shared’ items (through Google Reader, you can have one spot where you consume and share the cool content you find. In essence, you can help filter the signal from the noise for your contacts and friends.

Once you share an item, other people that ‘follow’ you will be notified of the new item. Awesome, I can read consume new cool things that my friends have filtered.

Replace delicious bookmarks altogether

If you visit your Shared settings page (Your stuff > Shared items > Sharing settings) and scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll notice:

Try the Note in Reader bookmarklet to share non-feed items from around the web.

Drag and drop the ‘Note in Reader’ link to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar and suddenly you can ‘share’ content from all over the web. Friend linked to something cool on Twitter? No problem, just ‘Note in Reader’ and everyone else knows about it. Tags and comment come standard. It’s that easy.

Free Google Voice calls with T-Mobile myFaves

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The following violates the fine-print for the MyFaves plans and I do not suggest you break rules. As mentioned by Josiah in the comments, the following guide goes against this statement on T-Mobile’s website: “Your five numbers must be US domestic numbers and must not include … customers’ own numbers; and single numbers allowing access to 500 or more persons.”

Some quick background: I’ve been a long-time customer of T-Mobile and have been extremely happy with their service. There have been four or five of us (friends and family) on a myFaves FamilyPlan for over four years now. We have free Mobile-to-Mobile, nights and weekends, unlimited SMS, five unlimited-call myFaves contacts and 700 minutes to share. With the $6 T-Zones internet, I pay only $37/month. life is good.

But it gets better. I rarely, if ever, am forced to use our daytime minutes thanks to Google Voice (formerly, GrandCentral).

Add your Google Voice number as a Fave

fave5

It’s not crazy, you do want your own phone number as a contact. Once you add your number to your MyFaves you can receive and make calls from/to that number with no charge. But first, make sure you set your incoming calls to display your Google Voice number instead of the caller’s number (so the calls appear from your MyFave contact):

Google Voice Set Caller ID

Why is this awesome? You never use your minutes and have more than one way to complete a call:

Google Voice call

  1. Call your number, dial a number: though not very practical, when you dial your Google Voice number from one of your existing phones (added to your Voice account) you are then prompted to listen to voicemail OR press 2 to dial a call. You can then dial a number and, while you’re still on the line, Google Voice will connect the call (unlimited talk time!). Keep in mind, the receiver will see the incoming call coming from your Google Voice number.
  2. Use the web service: your Google Voice contacts are the same as those in your Gmail account. If you sync your phone’s contacts with your Google Contacts then this is a seamless integration. All of your friends’ phone numbers appear in the Google Voice dashboard and you can click to call them. You are then called (the incoming number is your Google Voice) and your friend is connected. Again, since the call was from your Voice number, no charge!
  3. Use the mobile interface: same as the web interface, you can select a contact and have Google Voice connect the call by dialing your number (incoming from your Google Voice number).
  4. iPhone app: An application called GV Mobile for the iPhoneis available in both a free and premium versions and will interface directly with your iPhone contacts. The premium version also allows you to do cool things like review your call history, incoming SMS messages (to the Voice number), and listen to voicemail. AT&T/Apple have pulled all iPhone applications for Google Voice (including an official one from Google).

Bonus: free conference calls

One thing you’ll notice about T-Mobile MyFaves is that toll and toll-free numbers can not be added as a Fave. Bummer! No free calls to customer service, conference call lines, etc. Lucky for us, there’s FreeConferenceCall.com.

FreeConferenceCall assigns you a phone number that is not a toll free dial-in (in my experience, all the numbers are area code 605). This means you can add your conference call number as a Fave, dial in, and never be charged for the call.

(or, yes, you can just connect to the conference number through Google Voice)

UPDATE: Some users have claimed that Google Voice acts as a forwarding service and you don’t need to turn on the ‘display Google Voice’ number setting in order to have your minutes counted as myFaves. This is false. I’m looking at my call records from T-Mobile and can easily identify two calls that were charged to me though they came through Google Voice number. The display number does matter. The call presentation (announcing who is calling) does not.