An Apple a Day...

This week is the week of Apple news. Forget about President Obama's first State of Union Address or the Feds holding the rates steady, all eyes are on Apple. First, they rocked Wall Street with their $3B earnings in Q1 of 2010. Second, Google out-witted Apple Engineers with a true Google Voice web app workaround. Third, Apple announced the much-waited-rumored-sketched iPad Tablet device. Lets take a deep breath and digest the latter two news.

Google Voice Web App: I'll make this one quick; this has always been a battle of the wits. Simply speaking, Google Engineers are way too much of a bad-ass to take no for an answer, so they are proving a point by beating Apple's backwards-thinking App store by offering a fully functional Google Voice application via Web Browser. PC Mag has a good hands-on review here.

Apple iPad: What is this thing suppose to be? I'm lost. Steve Jobs pitched it as filler for a gap between a smartphone and a laptop but I can't figure out what does this serve. As it stands for me, my iPhone and laptop is what I take along pretty much everywhere I go. For me to grind out some real work, I'll bust out my work-issued 14" Laptop with a real keyboard and resolution (1440x760) for some spreadsheet action. While traveling, I rely on my iPhone a bit more to stay in sync with news, emails and calls. There really isn't anymore room in my bag for another device. For those without a Smartphone and a laptop, this is probably considerable, however, for a device that is suppose to rival a real computer, the OS (iPhone OS 3.2) isn't quite as capable (yet) to replace a laptop. For starters, Apple messed up in two areas: 1). Lack of Camera for video-conferencing and 2). Still doesn't support Flash... WHAT?!?. That said, this tablet is nothing but an oversized iPhone without the phone, atleast it has a microphone. For more detailed info on specs, checkout Engadget's post. At a starting price of $629 plus a monthly data premium from AT&T... I've already to tossed this one right next to the Apple TV section.

{Does anyone else besides me find the name iPad a bit confusing with iPod... both visually and phonically?}

Review: Google Voice

There has been quite a bit of buzz lately about Google’s latest communication product, dubbed Google Voice. This handy little web application is obviously stirring up some emotions between Google, Apple and AT&T. It even got the attention of FCC to muddle the water. So what is Google Voice? For one, it is the evolution of a product once called Google Grand Central. I vaguely remember signing up to Google Grand Central account couple of years ago and shortly after it was closed to the public. After polishing Grand Central for some time, Google re-released it as Google Voice; again it’s limited to few beta invitees and legacy Grand Central enrollees only.

Google Voice’s main function is to be the hub of all your telephony needs. By assigning one new phone number to you, you can use Google Voice to manage all aspects of your communication needs (screening calls, block calls, call-forwarding, voicemail, SMS, visual voicemail, text transcript voicemail, cheap long distance dialing, conference calls and lots more). By creating a “Gmail” like UI, Google Voice opens up another dimension to the good ole’ phone number and allows you to be in full control of your calls with your keyboard and mouse. If you already have a well-organized Gmail account, the contacts/address book plugs in nicely as well.

The biggest convenience to Google Voice probably having one web-based application (for remote access) for all of your communications needs. Having a voicemail emailed via text to you can be really handy (for now, transcribing is English only, when I tested Spanish, Chinese and Japanese, it just made out some funny English terms). Having a screen to capture your voicemail and SMS is also handy. Setting up the account wasn’t difficult but it did take some time to make sense of it all. Once you have the account configured, things work pretty flawlessly. I tested some of its features like placing a call, VM, and SMS which all worked as promised.

Google Voice for Mobile
While Google Voice application for iPhone was mysteriously rejected by ___ (insert: AT&T or Apple), they have made a good effort in delivering a solid mobile experience to users. For starters, if you own an Android phone or BlackBerry, the good news is you have a native application to use which includes cool VOIP dialer functionality. For the rest of us (WM, Pre, iPhone folks), we can still access a mobile website at Google.com/voice/m and get majority of the functions. Stay tuned for followup blog entries on Google Voice for Android and BlackBerry phones.