Banning Office Email? Seriously?

Guest writer Melanie Slaugh reports on Thierry Breton’s (a past French Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry) startling suggestion – ban interoffice emails. Is he being unrealistic or, is he a forward thinker? Read on – see what you think.

Can you imagine a business without email? Well, a French technology company wants to change the way you do business. Citing an overabundance of spam and a lack of personal connections, the French IT services firm Atos Origin plans to ban interoffice emails within two years.

Instead of rigid, impersonal emails, employees will converse mostly through instant-messaging tools or wiki-like documents that can be edited by multiple users online.

“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” said Atos CEO Thierry Breton, “At Atos Origin we are taking action now to reverse this trend.”

Breton gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he stated that he hadn’t sent a work e-mail in three years. “If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message,” he told the newspaper. “Emails cannot replace the spoken word.”

Breton thinks that only 10% of the interoffice emails his employees receive are important or useful, the other 90% consisting of forwards and spam.

So far, the response to Breton’s efforts to cut down on extraneous emails has been positive in Athos Origin, with interoffice emails declining by 20% in the last six months.

“Atos’ decision … is perhaps the most ringing endorsement yet for the notion that email is being gradually phased out of [the workplace],” wrote BonitaSoft CEO Miguel Valdés Faura on the tech blog GigaOm. “It will be interesting to see how many other large scale organizations will follow in its footsteps over the next several years.”

Web-based email as a whole seems to be on the way out as companies and people grow more mobile. A study done by ComScore, Inc, indicated that the number of web-based emails declined by six percent in 2010, while mobile email increased by thirty six percent.

“Digital communication has evolved rapidly in the last few years with an ever-increasing number of ways for Internet users to communicate with one another,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “From PCs to mobile devices, whether its email, social media, IM or texting, consumers have many ways to communicate and can do so at any time and in any place. The decline in web-based email is a byproduct of these shifting dynamics and the increasing availability of on-demand communication options.”

Many email-smothered employees could very well accept the change with open arms, unless the rise in personalization also comes with a rising in face-to-face meetings or conference calls.

Author Bio:

Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer.

She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.

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21,000 Free Printable Documents and Templates At FreePrintable.net

Kevin Savetz is into free with his remarkable FreePrintable.net web site. Amazingly, there are 80 sites in the Free Printable network offering you, free of charge, over 21,000 printable documents and templates.

Note: Some premium printables will incur a charge.

There are so many freebies available on this site, that it would take page after page just to list them – so take a look at just some of the sample offerings in the graphics below.

Click on a graphic to increase the size to make viewing easier. Better yet, if your Internet browser has a Zoom feature, crank it up!

FreePrintable.net

Before you begin downloading, checkout the FAQ page where you will find instruction for getting the best out of Kevin’s printable documents and templates.

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Auslogics Internet Optimizer – Seriously NOT Ready For Prime Time

While not first amongst the “snake oil” applications available for download – Internet optimizers do hold a prominent place. Still, when I heard that Auslogics had recently released its version of an Internet optimizer, I thought I’d take it for a test drive.

After all (my logic went), I’m a fan of Auslogics which has a reputation for high quality applications – many of which are free – so, maybe this Internet optimizer actually works. Besides, what actually harm could it do.

As it turned out, it didn’t take very long to see the harm it could do.

The installation begins with the usual offer to install the convenient (NOT!) Ask Toolbar.

First, I took advantage of the application’s offer to test my current connection speed…

which outputted the following.

Next, I scanned for suggested improvements. Scanning for optimized settings produces a comprehensive report which suggests settings you should consider changing. For this test, I accepted all of the recommended new parameters. 

Accepting the recommendations is one click simple.

Following a reboot, I retested my connection speed – which produced the following report. You’ll notice a marginal decrease in connection speed. In a real sense however, the difference is meaningless. Except as an indication, that despite the application’s promise, it simply didn’t meet my expectations.

That’s fair enough – this application is hardly the first I’ve tested that under delivered.

In the following screen capture you’ll notice the application includes a built-in Rescue Center. I should point out though, that I never install an application without creating a restore point first. You’ll see shortly, why this is necessary.

Following a restart of Firefox, I was shocked to discover that the application had reset the browser to its default settings. Some of which, in my view, are unsafe. And, effectively wiping out all of my personal customizations – which were considerable.

The following screen shot captures the new home page.

Worse, the application had caused the reinstallation of ALL of my Firefox add-ons and reset ALL of the add-ons back to the default settings. I’ll repeat – some of which, in my view, are unsafe.

Totally unacceptable!!! The following screen capture shows the open connections to a number of the add-ons home pages.

As I noted earlier, thankfully the application provides a recovery feature as indicated by the following graphic.

The backup did, in fact, work flawlessly, but…..

Closing points:

This test was not a one shot deal. I reinstalled and retested this application four times and the results, as reported here, were more or less, identical.

Following the test, I read a number of reviews of this application elsewhere, and it was more than evident, that despite the strong recommendations in these pseudo reviews, the reviewers had not actually tested the application. Shame on them!

Curiously (or maybe not so curious), Auslogics does not provide a download link on their web site for this application. That’s a bloody good move in my estimation. This application should suffer a quick death.

Regular readers will know, that I generally do not post on applications that don’t meet what I consider to be reasonable standards. But, this application (despite its recovery feature), has the potential to seriously screw up a typical user’s browser – and so the posted review.

It’s not often that an application being tested will annoy me (consternation is part of the testing game) – but, this one seriously pissed me off.

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The Never Ending Debate: Does Social Belong in Business?

Guest writer Grace Kang takes a look at social media, and lays out a logical and persuasive case for employing social media tools as a business builder. 

The term “social” may sound like it belongs anywhere but the office, but the truth is, the success of the world’s best businesses can be traced to their leadership’s reliance upon increasing their workers’ networking, relationships and and transparency.

Instead of having individual employees focused on completing tasks alone, by encouraging employees to expand their own networks formally and informally, businesses are able to leverage their employees’ communications for better growth. Business collaboration software and online tools can help make the process easier.

Why does social belong in business?

• People everywhere are choosing to communicate through social media. In a survey by Central Desktop, the participants indicated that 49% were using document collaboration tools, 19% said internal social networking tools, 18% were using wikis, 9% using discussion threads, and 5% using activity feeds.
• Social media is a great place to build long term relationships
• It makes it easy to engage prospects and customers with games, contests and more. In the survey, 22% said they used social tools to connect with customers, and 18% to win customers.
• Social software for business is getting better. To see the evolution of social collaboration tools, check out “The State of Social Collaboration”, a neat infographic that illustrates how social tools have changed since they were first introduced in the 1970’s.
• Its only going to get bigger, and you need to be there.

Even if a business is physically spread out across the country or even the globe, using social networking within the organization can have a dramatic positive impact on the company’s current and future returns. Collaboration software and online project management meld together through Central Desktop, which is a social software for business that provides employees who are located at separate locations a cohesive means of sharing ideas, planning projects and ultimately adding value to their shared business.

As transparency increases between groups located on different continents and between business units and functional centers, efficiency also will increase. Concerns that would normally have to be fed up and down their respective feeding chains are shared immediately for a fast response from the appropriate personnel.

Avoiding triangulation, wherein a the party in need of assistance goes to a third party instead of the party who can actually assist him or her, reduces staff time devoted to a project while empowering employees to take ownership of their work. As a result, employees take more pride in their work, act more efficiently and are more likely to produce a high quality product.

Social Collaboration Promote Employee Ownership and Morale

Employee ownership of work also makes it easier to identify supply chain problems early on and correct them before they snowball into larger concerns. The increased communication between departments bleeds into increased communication within departments. Greater clarity of duties, concerns, issues and other tasks at all levels reduces the chances that employees will spend their time working on the wrong types of projects, while increasing employee morale.

Allowing employees to mingle at a virtual water cooler means fast tracking discussions of interdepartmental issues, so that resolutions can be found in a timely manner.

A business group located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, can benefit greatly from learning about the solution that a group located in New York City or Hong Kong implemented, rather than working to try to figure out a solution to the problem themselves, which would take more time that they may not have to spend on the problem. Business collaboration software and tools like Central Desktop are leading the way.

Bio:

Grace Kang is a writer for Central Desktop, the leading social collaboration software solution for mid to large sized businesses.

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Quackwatch And The Skeptics Society – Web Sites For Rationalists

I’ve just finished reading Dan Brown’s latest novel – The Lost Symbol. If you don’t recognize Brown, you’ll know who I mean when I tell you that’s he’s the author of The Da Vinci Code – a novel which was roundly criticized for its historical and scientific inaccuracies. Despite the criticism, the novel went on to become a best seller (80 Million copies sold), and a film which has racked up almost a Billon Dollars in ticket sales.

This latest novel is written in the same (Da Vinci Code) style – relying on social-science fiction to advance the plot. And, as in his earlier novels, Brown’s continued use of symbolic pseudo science – in this case, Noetic Science, (the theory that the Brain holds untapped extraordinary power), will be lapped up by those who bought into the mystical nonsense in The Da Vinci Code; Jesus had a wife, a family, and didn’t actually die by crucifixion.

I recall reading several years ago that “Roughly one out of six Canadians — and one out of eight Americans – believe that Jesus faked his death on the cross, got married, and had a family”. Very weird!

I have to admit – I had a minor struggle trying to comprehend why otherwise intelligent people are so ready to take Brown’s fictional representations as factual, and literally accurate. But only a minor struggle – given the large numbers of Internet users who are so easily convinced to act against their own best interests, by cyber criminals, I’m more than aware that peoples’ behavior is often stranger than fiction.

After finishing reading the novel, curiosity got the better of me, and I spent some time researching Noetic Science in an attempt to learn the mysteries involved in turning Lead into Gold. 

In that journey, I discovered a couple of web sites, Quackwatch, and The Skeptics Society, that are worth considering as additions to your Bookmarks.

Quackwatch – From the site:

Quackwatch has grown considerably. To help visitors with special areas of interest, we maintain 22 additional sites for autism, chiropractic, dentistry, multilevel marketing, and many other hot topics. We are also closely affiliated with the National Council Against Health Fraud, which cosponsors our free weekly newsletter, and with Bioethics Watch, which highlights issues of questionable research on humans.

Our Internet Health Pilot site provides links to hundreds of reliable health sites. Our Casewatch site contains a large library of legal cases, licensing board actions, government sanctions, and regulatory actions against questionable medical products. These sites can be accessed through the “Visit Our Affiliated Sites” drop-down menu above. Their contents can be searched selectively with our WebGlimpse multi-site search engine or all at once through our Google search page.

The Skeptics Society – From the site:

The Skeptics Society is a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas, and the promotion of science. Our mission is to serve as an educational tool for those seeking clarification and viewpoints on those controversial ideas and claims.

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Billions Set To Watch The Royal Wedding On TV & Online

Guest writer David Samuel, who’s close to the action in the UK, gives us his take on the big day.

While most people in the UK are simply thankful for an extra bank holiday and extra beer drinking time, the rest of the world have embraced the royal fever and the Royal Family have certainly embraced social media.

No monarchy is as popular, and as well liked, as the Windsors right now. With a TV & Online audience set to topple the 2 billion mark, the question on everybody’s lips is – where will you be watching it?

Online & Social Media

Wise to the royal frenzy, Google have recently announced that the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, on April 29, will be streamed live on YouTube. The live stream is set to start at 0900 GMT with millions expected to login and watch it live. The music performed at the wedding ceremony will immediately be made available for download.

Viewers will also be able to follow all the action on Twitter, as well as download Royal apps leading up to the big event.

Television

Unless you switch your TV off on the day of the royal wedding, you’ll have a very hard time escaping it. To say the royal wedding will be a huge media event is a colossal understatement.

Every news organization worldwide, will be contending for position to broadcast the royal wedding live. Many electrical retailers have reported increased sales in TVs and projectors – with many splashing out on a new HD TV to watch the couple looking their royal best.

Street Party

The Brits certainly know how to party, and with the Prime Minister urging the nation to “get on and have fun” on the day of the royal wedding, most will gladly oblige. Over 4,000 applications for street parties have been requested in England and Wales on the day of the royal wedding. With 2 million expected to celebrate on the streets, so no excuses grab your Union Jack attire and join the fun.

Live

The famous Regent Street in London is now cloaked in Union Jack flags in preparation for the royal wedding. An extra 600,000 tourists, from home and overseas, are expected to congregate along the procession to get a glimpse of the royal couple.

3D TV

While many broadcasters were salivating at the thought of the first 3D royal wedding, it was soon ruled out by Buckingham Palace. Google once again, not missing a trick, expanded its Google Earth 3D imagery to include the entire route of wedding procession. Google declared that “With this new 3D data covering the royal procession route, you can indulge yourself in a “royals’-eye”.

The social media coverage of the royal wedding is unprecedented and, is “in line with the couple’s wishes to make the wedding as accessible as possible for as many people as want to participate,” stated Buckingham Palace.

The role of social media in the royal wedding highlights just how far media communication has developed. The wedding between Prince Charles and Dianna, 30 years ago, was only available on TV, with viewers now likely to be watching the event on television, or YouTube, while liaising with theirs on social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.

It really is a digital revolution and all that is left to do is wish the happy couple a happy future.

Biography:

David Samuel is an electronic media consultant, with over 13 years’ involvement with some of the leading electronic retailers. David’s awareness and market intelligence make him one of the best equipped experts around. While specialising in LCD TVs David’s knowledge covers a wider spectrum of consumer electronics.

HTC EVO 3D Brings 3D Parallax to Smartphones

Smartphone 3D – a game changer, or just a passing fad? Guest writer Simon Drew takes a look.

With the resurrection in 3D cinema in recent years with Hollywood hits like Avatar, there has been a big drive by electronics companies to extend the craze to other devices. 3D televisions are now becoming more commonplace and even 3D games consoles are available with the introduction of the Nintendo 3DS.

It is no surprise then that this ‘new’ technology should make its way into the world of mobile phones, and even less of a surprise that HTC would be one of the companies at the helm of this latest development.

Although 3D cinema has been around for several decades, the technology has not really existed until now to take it to a wider arena. The electronics industry is currently undergoing rapid development however, thanks to the ever increasing demand for the latest smartphone gadgetry, and now it is more than feasible to introduce this feature to the world of mobile telephony.

It should be noted that the 3D technology found on the HTC EVO 3D, as with its only current rival the LG Optimus 3D, does not work in the same way as 3D cinema. While the latter requires 3D glasses to be worn for the 3D effect to be achieved, this is no longer a requirement with the relatively recent development of parallax barrier displays.

This system works by placing an undetectable barrier between the user and the screen so that the screen image is only partially displayed. This results in each eye seeing a slightly different image and the resulting disparity being the cause of an apparent third dimension that does not truly exist. While this system means that 3D glasses are no longer required it does have one obvious drawback.

This drawback is that the 3D effect is only achieved when the screen is held at a certain viewing angle. For short term use this is fine, but unless you are able to maintain perfect positioning of your head and the phone screen for extended periods, this will only lead to frustration when trying to engage in longer activities like watching 3D movies.

This is a similar setback to the one found on early handheld colour devices such as the Sega Gamegear. While the Sega handheld console looked more spectacular on paper, it lost out to its monochromatic Nintendo Gameboy rival for this very same reason – the screen was only viewable if you held it in the correct position.

Perhaps this was part of Sega’s downfall as they certainly don’t enjoy the position that they once did in the gaming industry. Should HTC and LG be worried? Maybe, but probably not. Most owners of their smartphones are not impatient school children and both companies have more up their sleeves than just 3D smartphones.

However, it could be a deciding factor in whether or not 3D really takes off in the smartphone industry and becomes a well established niche like music phones or camera phones. There are, no doubt, a great many people who will be keen to get their hands on this latest technological development but, perhaps even more who will not be fully convinced until this drawback is ironed out.

Simon Drew is a Marketing Executive with MD Operations Ltd, an online marketing company based in the UK.

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Social Media – Advantages for the Business Owner or Marketing Executive

Guest writer Bryan Keller, gives business owners the lowdown on social media  and explains how taking advantage of social media and online business communities, can positively impact the bottom line.

As recently as only 2-3 years ago, very few business owners took much of an interest in becoming part of the growing number of social media or online business communities that have exploded across the Internet in recent years.

Today however, most if not all business leaders, from the very smallest sole proprietorship to the very largest corporation, are aware of the fact that the Internet is quickly becoming the average consumer’s first resource in locating and choosing the party they ultimately choose to do business with.

Electing not to participate in this expanding progressive electronic evolution, would and surely will, have a very severe negative impact on those businesses that are not fully invested in the experience.

The number of professional user groups on websites like Facebook and LinkedIn has grown more than 10 fold or over 1000% over the past two years. Dismissing this trend as pure fancy would be an unwise maneuver for any savvy business owner or marketing executive.

These professional networks can provide many benefits to every type of business. And, the benefits are not only applicable to the business owners; belonging to a social network also provides numerous benefits to all of the other members (and prospective customers) of the social network as well.

Benefits of Social Networking from the Standpoint of the Business Owner:

Building or Increasing Company or Product Awareness – Social Media Sites provide a tremendous asset that allows custom tailored delivery of timely assessments of the types of services or products that a business provides, supplies, or offers.

Additionally, press releases describing exciting new changes taking place within a business serve the business and the consumer alike. A business forum can also be a fantastic way to provide consumers with near real-time helpful information on the steps needed to be taken in the advent that someone may be experiencing some sort of a problem with a particular good or service.

Observe and Track – Because Social Media Networks are designed to allow two-way communication between its participants, as a business owner you will have the luxury of seeing what other members of the online community may be saying about your brand, product, service and competition in virtually ‘real-time’.

Engage (Current Customers) and Entice (New Customers) – Do not neglect the opportunity to involve existing customers and network subscribers in all manner of interesting and topical debates, quizzes and feedback forums and blogs. When doing so the benefit is manifold as this process has the added effect of enticing new customers and subscribers simultaneously as they get drawn into the discussions.

Assist and Support – Here is the perfect opportunity for a business to demonstrate to its valuable customers in a substantial way, the benefits and advantages of using their goods and services. A great way to accomplish this is by providing valuable support in near real-time for any difficulty, problem, confusion, or question an existing customers or prospective customer may be experiencing with regard to the company’s products or services.

Attract and Qualify – By including the appropriate keywords and tags in the social media site profile, blog posts, articles and forum discussions, the result will be many, many, new potential customers who will be directed to your content automatically by the search engines as they search the Internet for relevant information that happens to match your niche (and these prospective clients are pre-qualified as strong potential leads – they found you because you offer something they were searching for and are obviously interested in).

Increase Your Bottom Line – Marketing 101.

Creating a Call to Action: (A Perceived Sense of Urgency)

Give a deadline which is clearly defined and visible in many advantageous locations throughout your business website. One effective way to achieve this is to create a deadline by which time certain featured products or services must be purchased or agreed upon due to the fact that the price for that good or service is scheduled to and will increase beyond a specified date and time.

It is imperative that you follow through on the price increase as well. An angry customer is one who is told that a price will go up on a product, after which they rush out and purchase said product or service, and then low and behold the deadline passes and the product never changes price. No one likes being lied to. Stay true to your word. Honesty and Integrity go hand and hand with trust and loyalty. You can always discount products again at a later date.

Always precede any price increase with many highly visible notices allowing your customer to take advantage of the current rate before the increase is scheduled to go into effect.

Trial offers are also a fantastic way to allow a consumer the chance to try on a limited basis the product or service you are offering. (If you are offering truly outstanding products and services, then obviously you would want people to have a chance to learn that first hand.)

For a Trial Period to be effective it should be offered as what is called a ‘No Risk’ trial. In other words let your customer know that if for some reason they decide they are not satisfied with your product or service within the trial period they can cancel the agreement without being charged for anything (no questions asked).

Freebies are also a great way to entice people into trying a product or service. They are best used as an added feature to a package of goods or services that your potential customer may be contemplating buying.

Be Creative, think of other ways to create that sense of urgency such as ‘If you order our system within the next ten days we are going to throw in at no extra charge 5 free video tutorials that speed you through the process of learning our course (regularly $99 value!)

Remember these are merely examples; the only limit is your imagination!

Guest writer Bryan Keller:

I own a Computer Repair and Data Recovery business in San Antonio, TX, San Antonio Computer Repair. I spent 10 years in database development. I am now also providing Website Development, Hosting, and SEO services. We use the Joomla CMS. Altogether I have been involved in computer programming for over 30 years.

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Skype – Right for Your Life? Part Two

As many of you know, last week Google announced free phone calls to “real phones”, not just PC to PC calls , using Gmail as the launch platform. After kicking the tires on this new Google service, I came away very impressed.

The buzz, all this week, on this new offering from Google, seemed to center around the (negative) impact on Skype, the granddaddy of “free” communication applications. Personally, I don’t buy into the negative impact view.

If the  installed application base means anything, and it does, then Skype, with its 560 million registered users, versus Gmail’s 200 million users (of which only a small percentage have signed up for the new service), would have to commit a series of critical blunders to lose market position.

We’ve seen market leaders stumble and fall in the past of course, but Skype has always been highly proactive to changing market conditions. In the past few days, for example, Skype has released version 5.0 Beta 2 for Windows which includes the following new features.

New in version 5.0 Beta 2:

10-way group video calling – Making a 10-way group video call requires a very fast computer, the minimum system requirements for is Intel Core2duo 2 GHz CPU or equivalent, the recommended CPU is Intel i7.

Skype Home experience – Skype Home is a new area in Skype which provides relevant updates for you, including information about your purchases, your friends’ mood message updates, and videos to help new users get started with Skype.

Offline instant messaging – You can send and receive messages from your friends who are offline at the moment. The messages will be delivered at the moment when the other party or you will sign in to Skype, even if your friend is not online anymore.

New contact search and add experience

Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions – Built in client messaging which informs you about potential issues with the call and what to do to improve your call quality.

Post call experience

General User Interface refresh – Numerous updates to Skype’s left side screen there is a new profile and mood message entrance area as part of Skype Home

Regular users are familiar with the following standard features.

Improved sound quality over regular telephones.

Secure end-to-end encryption.

Uses peer-to-peer technology for even more enhanced security.

Video calling – I have to admit I find this feature invaluable.

Conference calling – a very cool feature.

Online status notification – online, away, do not disturb, invisible, offline.

Contact creation, including groups, and importation from MS Outlook and Outlook Express etc.

Screen sharing – I find a lot of uses for this feature.

Chat – I find this a great help for sharing URL’s which can then be opened during a video call to facilitate the sharing of information.

In its basic form, Skype is a free communication package, using proprietary code, which allows users to make free computer to computer calls, including video calls. I use the Skype video calling feature dozens of times a day to speak with contacts worldwide.

As well, there are a bundle of additional features, that can be purchased at a low cost, which will expand the application’s functionality.

Available Upgrade features:

Call phones and mobiles

Receive calls from phones and mobiles with an online number

Voicemail – Send and receive voicemails

Forward calls to phones

Transfer calls to phones and mobiles

System requirements:

Windows XP, Vista or 7

Sound input and output devices – microphone and speakers, or a headset. Of course, for video calling you’ll need a webcam.

Download at: Skype

Note: beta versions are still a work in progress, so you might find the odd bug.

I’ll continue to use both Skype and Google Voice as complimentary applications (not competitive applications), since each applications excels in areas that are not necessarily crossovers.

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Free Phone Calls From Gmail – Yes It’s Free, But Is It Any Good?

If you live in North America, you’ll know that “FREE” is one of the most overused, and undefined words – ever. Free, has so many variables attached, that it’s virtually worthless as a descriptor.

If you don’t live in North America, it’s still probable that the same conditions apply where you live, as well.

Despite the fact that “free”, is a very uncertain term, and despite the fact that we’ve all aware of that old expression – “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, advertisers continue to appeal to our lower instincts by crafting entire campaigns around “FREE”.

So last week, when Google announced “free” phone calls to “actual phones”, not just PC to PC (including long distance), from within Gmail, in both Canada and the US, my natural sense of skepticism kicked in.

Being the old cynic that I am, I immediately thought –

It’s got to be a hassle. Well I couldn’t have been more wrong. Google Voice is the easiest VOIP application I’ve ever used. Even easier to use than my long time favorite VOIP application – Skype.

Voice quality has gotta suck. Wrong again! Voice quality beats my home phone quality – hands down. In fact, if you’re a speakerphone user, I’ll wager that this application will be an improvement.

It isn’t really free. By now, I was a little tired of being wrong but, I was wrong again! Google’s free phone calling feature in Gmail is, well, FREE – at least until the end of 2010.

Setup couldn’t be easier. Highlight “Call Phone”, in your Gmail chat menu.

Then, just download and install the voice and video application from the next screen. The installation app will automatically calibrate your devices. Alternatively, you can choose to self calibrate.

Following installation, you’ll notice that the “Call phone” icon has changed to green – from the previous gray.

Clicking on the Call phone icon will open a phone keypad, as the following screen capture shows.

Choose your Country, (Canada or the US for the moment), input the phone number – either with your mouse, using the onscreen keypad, from your keyboard, or your Gmail contact list. Click on “Call”, and voila! – you’re connected. Incidentally, the application will automatically save your call history.

Incoming calls:

The service provides a US phone number (not yet available in Canada – but it’s on the way), chosen by the user from available numbers in selected area codes.

Requirements:

US or Canadian based Gmail users only – for the time being.

A Gmail account.

Web Cam and Speakers (I found this the easiest setup), or

Microphone and Speakers, or

Headset.

Download: From within Gmail.

Features:

Explore some of the most popular features of Google Voice by watching these videos:

• Overview
• Voicemail transcription
• One number
• Personalized greetings
• International calling
• SMS to email
• Share voicemails
• Block callers
• Screen callers
• Mobile app
• Conference calls

I must admit, I’m very enthusiastic about this new service from Google. I find it very convenient, and it’s already saved me some cash in long distance fees.

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