Google Voice

With Apple’s media fest last week filled with iPod and gaming introductions, I noted it’s time to announce what tool I think is best suitable for me (at this point and time) and take Apple out of the limelight for a second. Quite frankly, how often does one need to get a new iPod or upgrade their iPhone OS? Not I. But I have been using a tool worth looking at. I’ll have to stick with Google Apps this time, the most recent of my explorations is that of Google Voice.
I got a Google Voice number not too long ago, and it’s like managing your private VoIP network. With Google Voice, you get one phone number and that number will call you on as many devices as you would want. When someone calls you on your Google number, the devices you added will all ring, depending on your setting of course. I included my personal and work cell numbers, as well as my office number. Now I only need to give out one phone number, and I can choose to answer either device. What’s convenient is that  you can route the calls are you wish. For instance, my office number will not ring after 5PM, nor weekends.  You can also choose to screen unknown callers. A great feature is your voicemail. If a call goes to your voicemail, Google Voice can email the transcribed message or sent as a text (SMS) message to a mobile device of your choice.
The tricky part is that you may have a Google number, but you need to download a Google app on your mobile to call as that number, otherwise you will be calling as the number on your device. This is convenient if you have a work cell number or a personal cell number that you rather not give out. You can also make a call direct for the http://voice.google.com website. What else can you do from your website? When you login, you may send SMS messages as well, that is very convenient if you are not quick on a qwerty keyboard.
Other features on Google Voice include recording conversations and managing contacts.

Make Money on YouTube

Don’t we often wonder, can we make money on video’s we upload on YouTube. There are followers of the crazed YouTube video like “David after dentist”,  and you wonder why would someone even upload it. Now, Google has a reason. With Google’s YouTube Partnership Program, if you uploaded a video that accumulates a large number or views, you might have a chance to profit ad revenue from Google. You must apply for a YouTube Partnership to get started.
Once you enrolled in the Partner Program, and uploaded videos, Google will determine if the video qualifies for revenue based on their criteria, including number of views and content. If your video is eligible for, you will receive an email and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to your video on the watch page and in other places in YouTube your account. If you want to earn income from your YouTube video, you will need to have a Google AdSense account.

My take on Time’s top 50 sites

Time magazine released the 50 Best Websites of 2009. First, there’s the obvious on Time’s list, Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Flickr (ranked no.1 ), Facebook and Twitter all made the parade. Then there’s my take on the list, based on bookmarks, there’s five sites (10% of the list) I recommend highly.
First, there’s Popurls, an aggregator, unlike Google Reader an such. This site I recommend rather than other aggregators for it recommends the most popular links (at the time)  from NY Times, Google and Yahoo News, Digg, Youtube and more. Second on my bookmarks is Wolfram Alpha, a search engine with a touch or artificial intelligence. Wolfram understands your questions and tries to figure out answers rather than return a variety of links to visit to “find your answer yourself”. Although, like most computers, you must ask correctly, therefore there is a learning curve on the users side, but worth it. Next, a site I love, Fora.tv, a antidote for the poison that is YouTube. Fora.tv is a video site with content such as conferences, seminars, lectures, and news from international forums by intellectuals touching the subjects of the economy, environment, politics, science and technology. Of course, there’s Aardvark, the newest kind of search that asks your inquiries to your network. Finally, Pandora and Last.fm are considered twins and therefore tied at 32. The music sites play your choice of tunes based on artirst and songs you plant as seeds.
I award special recognition to both Metafilter and BoingBoing, having made the top 50 Best of 2009 sites and the Top 25 Blogs list.

Seeing Chrome is more places

Yesterday I was told by a computer support technician at a particular school district, that they were going to install Google Chrome on all the schools in their district. This was revealed to them this week, having to complete that task in all grade K through 12 before the first day of school this Monday. Although, Chrome has been received well among IT professional, NSS Labs tested IE 8 to be the most secure browser at this moment. Although, an article by Microsoft Watch revealed the NSS Labs test was founded my, Microsoft, surprised?
Even though IE 8 tested well, it won’t be long before malicious attackers will find more vulnerabilities on the browser. Moreover,  while Google engineers can patch and improve their product rigorously, IE 8 won’t see an update to new found problems unless it’s the second Tuesday of each month.

Social Networking for Dummies – nay, Beginners Part 2

Twitter

In continuation to my original Social Networking for Dummies (Part 1), Twitter is a broadcasting tool for social networking. Much like Facebook, you follow people or brands and post your status, also known as a tweet, to those following you. It's an effective tool for sharing information, such as an interesting news article, or even a funny YouTube video. However, you do not want to become a statistic where studies proved that the majority of tweets are meaningless chatter. I will admit, out of 100% of my tweets, maybe 4% to 6.5% fall into that category (don't ask how I got that number). Yesterday, ZDnet release a list of 100 technology experts on Twitter, it was a part of a three part series I recommend reading. I plugged in a few of my favorites that I know of that I hadn't added to my list, and to my dismay, I came to the conclusion that a good amount of higher ranked "Tech Experts", had many meaningless tweets. Which is surprising, and perhaps ZDNet generated the list based on the quantity of tweets, not quality, tech relative tweets. You can judge for yourself on a page I built that links to the users tweets.
I leave you with this, Twitter, as described in the picture below, is a young social networking tool, but smart nonetheless. Of course, as part of this series of Social Networking for Dummies, the almost popular comic by ~elontirien, stereotypes the social network sites. MySpace being the obnoxious, albeit, jokey site, versus Facebook, smart and cool, Wikipedia is the nerd with no style and without a girlfriend, while Google is the “know it all”. Finally devianArt is the creative type and YouTube, ruthless future drop-out.

Internet University Cast by ~elontirien on deviantART