Google Voice Rises To Replace GrandCentral

New to the service will be the ability to receive SMS text messages sent to your Google Voice number on a mobile device, and sending messages from your Web-based Google Voice inbox.
Google's online voicemail and call management system GrandCentral will be reborn on Thursday as Google Voice, with several new features.

The service will remain in private beta for existing GrandCentral users for a few more weeks. But after that Google expects to open Google Voice to the general public.

In an interview at Google's San Francisco office, Craig Walker, senior product manager for Google's voice products, described Google Voice as a service that can help organize chaotic communication channels.

Google Voice, in keeping with Google's mission to organize the world's information, provides a single phone number that routes incoming calls to six of the user's phones at once. It also provides a single online inbox for voicemail messages.

"A telephone number should be personal to you," said Walker. "And with everything in one inbox, you now have only one voicemail to check."

Google Voice inherits GrandCentral's many features, including the ability to screen calls as if in a room with an answering machine, to record calls and access those recordings online, to block unwanted callers, and to receive notifications of voicemail via e-mail or SMS.

It includes various personalization features, such as the ability to set how calls to one's Google Voice number are routed, based on time or caller. It also allows personalized greetings, per user or group, and the ability to personalize the ringing sound that callers hear while waiting for you to answer.

Google Voice also features GrandCentral's WebCall Button, for connecting a would-be callers phone to yours using a Web-based button, the ability to initiate a call from your online address book, and visual voicemail.

Google Voice

Resource: Informationweek.com

'Diggnation' co-hosts talk online video

When Jimmy Fallon appeared as a guest host on "Diggnation" in January to promote his new late-night talk show, he made clear that he was going after a different audience than broadcast TV was used to.

Now, in the second week of "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," the "Saturday Night Live" alum is returning the favor. "Diggnation" co-hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose will appear tonight as guests on his show.

"We sort of assumed it was going to be months before we got onto the show," Albrecht said.

The courtship of "Diggnation," a weekly online video show that's wildly popular among the geek crowd, shows how resolute Fallon has been in his quest to attract a tech-savvy audience.

"Late Night" producer Gavin Purcell has said that viewers can expect to see more product placement than they're used to. Purcell, who previously produced "Attack of the Show" on the G4 network, is pushing for gadgets, games and Web services to feature prominently.

In one gag, the camera zoomed in on audience members and then displayed silly fake Facebook status updates above their heads. A blogger from Engadget demonstrated the Palm Pre cellphone on the show. And Fallon used micro-blogging service Twitter to solicit interview questions for Cameron Diaz from fans.

Source: LATimes.com

Konami ID servers blown to smithereens?

It seems like the servers at id.konami.net said goodbye earlier today. The awaited Metal Gear Online BETA was released in North America today, and is going to be released in Europe tomorrow.

To take part of the MGO BETA you need to sign up with a special Konami ID, but a ton of gamers are finding this quite hard to do, since the servers were blown to the smithereens earlier today. Maybe Metal Gear's popularity exceeded Konami's expectations? To all you gamers out there, keep signing in. Traffic will probably be reduced by tomorrow!

The Alice Project - an invention that counts

Finally an invention that really counts. Randy Pausch, Professor of Carnegie Mellon University started The Alice Project to help teen girls learn to program. It's all in a 3D programming environment, so teens can learn how to create animation to tell a story, play an interactive game or a video to share on the web, while learning introductory computing.

You can download versions for middle school and high school/college levels from the site.