Google Voice Dialer

Edit (1/26/2010): The official Google Voice Extension strikes back. It is lighter than the Google Voice Dialer 3rd-party extension and includes an option to make phone numbers clickable in websites for easy Google Voice calls.

An open-source Google Voice Chrome Extension beats the Google’s official one in many respects. The Google Voice Dialer not only alerts you when you have a new SMS or a Voicemail, but it also allows you to easily call or SMS via Google Voice without leaving the website you’re on. The sleek jQuery interface is functional and appealing to the eye. If you use Google Voice and Chrome (dev branch) make sure it check out the Google Voice Dialer.

Edit (1/17/2010): Bummer. Service is shutdown due to ‘concerns of Google TOS violations’.

Those of you using Google Voice for your SMS needs might find a new free service called GVXMPP (Twitter: @GVXMPP) to be quite useful.

What does this service do? Well, it allows you to have your SMS sent to your Google Voice number to be delivered as an instant message to your XMPP-capable IM client (Pidgin, Adium, Trillian, MirandaIM, etc). This also means that you can reply to an SMS via an IM.

How does GVXMPP accomplish this? The service takes advantage of the Google Voice option to forward your SMS as emails. Then, a forwarding filter is setup to forward your SMS from your email address to your new XMPP address that you get when you sign up for the service. To summarize, your SMS travels the following way: Google Voice –> Your Email –> GVXMPP service –> your IM client. One of the great things about this service is that your SMS arrive nearly instantly and you can manage them easily without being near your phone and without cramped typing on a small keyboard. Guys at GVXMPP have created a very handy guide that makes setting this up a breeze.

Android Robot

My top 10 Android applications.

Locale: Locale makes it so that my phone never rings in class and so that I don’t get woken up by a ‘wrong number’ in the middle of the night. Locale has been the swiss army knife of Android conditional settings. Tasker has the potential to do what Locale does and more, but until then Locale is the go-to app.

3Banana Notes: An excellent all-around application with seamless web-sync. This well-designed app allows the user to quickly jot down notes, hash-tag them, attach photos, geotag and share via email, Twitter, Facebook and others. The webapp allows you to authenticate using your Google account —  great for those already logged into Google services.

Remember the Milk: While not technically free (requires $25 Pro subscription on the account), RTM is a phenomenal to-do list application. The interface allows pretty much full access to all of the features of RTM. As with RTM’s offerings for non-mobile devices, there is no learning curve to use the service, but it will take some poking around to really learn how to use the service most effectively. With features like Smart Add, adding tasks on the Android device is a snap and the use of Smart Lists makes it easy to only see the to-do items that you want to see. The application also allows geotagging of tasks (mail package when near post office), and ability to sort and filter tasks in any way you’d like.

Mute: A very simple but at the same time very useful application. Mute is essentially acts as a widget that allows you to mute all of your phone sounds and unmute them. Simply add a shortcut to your app on your desktop and press it once to mute, once again to unmute. That’s the only function of the app, but it does it well, and once you start using it, you’ll quickly realize how often you need to mute and unmute your phone.

Google Voice: Google Voice, requires the currently invite-only service from Google to function, but that doesn’t prevent it from being an indispensable application for Android users. The Google Voice application makes it easy to take advantage of a single number that never needs to be ported or changed. More so, the Google Voice app provides you with the ability to send and receive unlimited text messaging without paying a dime to your carrier and to ditch painful voicemail for Google’s — that includes transcription and unlimited message storage. In conjunction with the Fav5 from T-Mobile or the equivalents from the other carriers, you can effectively enjoy unlimited outbound calling since all calls dial out via a set number that can be added to one of the unlimited calling numbers.

Gentle Alarm: Now that cell phones have pretty much rendered alarm clocks useless, everyone needs a reliable alarm app. Gentle Alarm is well worth the three-dollar price tag. It allows you to do the expected: ringtones/music for alarm, changing snooze periods and setting multiple alarms that repeat based on any week pattern you desire. Gentle Alarm also has a lot of really useful additions that not all alarm clock apps have. It can fade in your alarm over a set period of time, and ring a ‘safe alarm’ at the end of the alarm to make sure you are really up. It can also help you get better rest by playing a quiet ‘pre-alarm’ sometime before your actual alarm to try to wake you up when you aren’t in deep sleep.