Well 24 hours after me Google Voice review, I found some additional information which adds some VERY cool features to Google Voice.

First, I went-a-Googlen’ and I found a help article inside of Google knowledge base that completely addressed my second suggestion: “Cell Phone Voice Mail integration”. Basically this article (and the comments there in) allowed me to setup my iPhone to use Google Voice as my Voicemail provider. So I am no longer using AT&T Visual Voicemail feature. While checking my voicemail is now less seamless, having the machine transcription emailed to my iphone I think more than balances it out.

Here’s the address: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=00a93855af6943b4&hl=en

Next, I completely forgot to address the Text Messaging/SMS feature of Google Voice.

This feature actually saved me a few weeks ago. Our weekly Rotary Meeting is held in the basement of the Cumberland Mountain State Park Lodge. As I am the secretarial officer of the club, my job is to get there early, setup, take attendance, and clean up afterwards. Well, shortly after I arrived at the meeting location, I realized that I had forgot to SMS a colleague a list of things he need to bring to the meeting. For AT&T users the park lodge (like much of the US) is a dead zone for service. Rather than spending several minutes wandering around outside looking for signal, I simply hopped on the parks Internet and used Google Voice to SMS my list out. I even exchanged a few additional message to clarify the things I needed.

I’ve recently written about my feelings regarding SMS and billing practices of the Cell Phone Industry (they stink). So anything that usurps an unfair Cell Phone Company is a good thing in my book, and Google Voice Does just that.

There are some technical limitations however that I feel will prevent Google Voices SMS system from gaining much ground on traditional SMS. Google Voice’s SMS is not “real” SMS as defended by the GSM and digital mobile phone specifications. Google Voice’s SMS is more like AOL or Yahoo Instant Messaging with a conduit to the Mobile Phone Network. Incidentally, most Internet IM services already have a conduit system that allows for free sending and receiving from an IM client to a Mobile Phone. Well, free for the IM user, not the Mobile User.

In a very real way, to use Google Voice’s SMS system requires a change in behavior for the user that I think most will not be willing to do. Right now, SMS comes to your cell phone without a user having to proactively do anything to get that message. I send a message to you, your phone alerts you to let you know you have a message from me. With Google Voice, to receive an SMS the recipient must “check” his or her Google Voice account to see if there are any new messages. This is a small but stark behavior change. People use the SMS system on mobile phones because there is a perception that one can send a quick message to someone else, and there is an expectation that the message will be delivered (and read) within a short period of time. Requiring a recipient to proactively “check” for new messages removes that sense of immediacy from the SMS process. If the sense of immediacy is removed, then the sender of a message would be better of composing an email to the recipient. An email would have the same requirement of the recipient proactively “checking” for the message, but not have the limitation of traditional SMS such as a maximum of 160 charters per cost unit and no ability to send images.

To overcome this behavior change requirement Google Voice SMS would have to do one of two things. One, have an application that ran on a phone to actively check for new messages and alert the user. This of course would mean that Google would have to create a view swath of software to run and a variety of Smart Phones, and that does not take into account that MOST cell phones in the market today are not capable of installing and running Third Party software. Two, use a traditional alert mechanism, like Cell Phone Company SMS, to alert the user that they have a new Google Voice SMS. This of course is self defeating, why pay for a Cell Phone Company SMS to get a free Google Voice SMS?

Ultimately I fear that no matter how much I admire Google sticking it to the Cell Phone Companies, Google Voice SMS is to-little to-late. All Smart Phones and most Dump Phones (called “Feature” Phones to make them more sellable) already allow for automatic checking of traditional email and some IM services without the user having to proactively think to stop and run a program on his or her phone. I’ve been getting email almost instantly on my cell phones going all the way back to 1998, 4 years before BlackBerry made checking your email while out of the office chic. (It amazes me that people still think that BlackBerrys are the only way to do that.) As more people become used to the ideal of “instant email everywhere” the notion of having a separate SMS system becomes obsolete and redundant. We have been at that point technologically for many years, it will just take a while to catch up to it socially.

In that light Google Voice’s SMS features are a genital bridge to a time when SMS will no longer be necessary. Having Google forward SMS messages your Cell Phone is a way to still receive legacy messages from those who have not yet embraced mobile email. Sending SMS out of Google Voice is a Free way to side step Cell Phone Companies charges when you need to textually communicate with a luddite. But in the end, with all the “extra” steps one must do to send or receive SMS with Google Voice, it’s simpler to just use mobile email, or just place a voice call, unless SMS is your only option.

I do wish that Google would pass on those SMS messages to me as email rather than as a Cell Phone Company SMS messages.

SMS and Text Messaging is quite possibly the largest mass act of theft ever perpetrated in the history of US commerce. So much so that it makes Bernie Madoff look like a shop lifter by comparison. To understand just why this is an act of theft by Wireless Companies, one needs to understand a few simple things about how SMS works.

Digital Mobile phones communicate with the cell towers in various ways and frequencies that all boil down to some method of Code Division. Code Division cuts up digital radio traffic into small chunks (sometimes called “frames”) that allow many devices to share the same frequency space. This is why each cell phone does not have its own “channel” like analog TVs, CB, or police radios do. There is a lot of “non-voice” traffic that get exchanged between a mobile handset and the tower(s) it is hooked to. Most of these “non-voice” digital communications involve the handset telling the tower it signal strength, location data relative to other towers, call status, etc, etc, or the tower telling the handset things like the exact time. Your phone exchanges many of these “non-voice” digital messages per minute, each of which is transmitted or received in a Code Division chunk/frame. Even when there is no “non-voice” data per-say, your phone may still be transmitting empty frames just as part of the protocol.

Soon after the first deployment of a digital cell phone system in 1982 it was realized that after you packed in all the mundane “non-voice” signaling data there was still empty space left in the frame. The ideal was proposed to allow “extra” data to be packaged in this empty frame space, the phone was sending up the data anyway, why not use all the available bits? The “extra” data could be composed by the user of the mobile phone as sort text messages, or as text alerts from the network, and thus SMS was born. Later, in 1985, a full specification of using partial and spare frames was created. The ubiquitous 160 character limit comes from the space limitation of a single Code Division Frame, including the overhead of routing data (to and from numbers). The first SMS message as we know them today was sent in the UK on December 3 1992 by Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis on the Vodafone network, it read “Merry Christmas”.

Now 17 years on, SMS and text messaging is a multi billion dollar a year industry with some messages costing as much as $1 for 160 charters of data. In fact, text messaging charges are bankrupting families who fall into the trap of “over texting”. The internet is filled with stories of families that get $1,000 invoices from Cell phone companies who then seem to think there is nothing morally wrong with that amount and expect the subscriber to make prompt payment. The cost to a subscriber of sending text messages is at least FOUR TIMES the cost NASA pays to get images off the Hubble Space Telescope. To put this into perspective, to transmit the King James Bible (without annotations) over AT&Ts text messaging network would cost $12,400.00. If you converted a single music file to text and sent it over AT&T is would cost about $6,000.00.

It’s outrageous and here’s the truly sad (and I think criminal) part, IT’S ALL FAKE. The text message system is simply part of the Digital Cell Phone Protocol. Those tiny text messages are being squeezed into otherwise blank areas of Code Division Frames. Transmitting those frames, blank or not, are essential for the cell network to function. It costs the cell phone companies the same to send your text message as it does to simply leave your phone turned on. Yet these companies are making ungodly amounts of money on nothing more than perceived value and empty space. IN FACT is costs the Cell Phone Companies MORE if you ask them to turn off Text messaging on your phone. If you ask them to turn it off, the signally protocol still requires that you transmit and receive text message frames, but the cell phone company has to proactively block those messages at many points on the network. What a completely upside down scenario, over charging people for nothing vs. spending money and effort to implement something for which cannot be invoiced.

I’ve been playing around with Google Voice for the past couple of days. Before I get into my findings let me review for a moment “what” Google Voice is. I’ll preface this by saying that I perhaps am not the best test candidate to evaluate Google Voice, but I’ll explain why that its in  due course.

Google Voice is a free service offered by Google that give you a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) number. When someone calls that number you can direct what happens to that call based on “rules” which you setup via the Google Voice web interface. Specifically you can “route” that call to any other phone number or multiple numbers at once. The classic example is that you can “route” calls made to you Google Voice Number to your work phone durning the day and then your home phone at night. Another examples is that  you can have calls made to your Google Number from friends go to your cell phone, but unknown number go to voice mail. You can also mark numbers as “spam” which adds an extra layer of protection thwarting annoying calls from telemarketeers, debt collectors, surveys, politician robo-calls, or in-laws.

There is also a feature that allows calls made to you to be “announced” so when you answer the call, you are given the option of sending them right to voice mail, and even eavesdropping on the message they are leaving with the possibility to override it and speak with them.

Of course there is Voice Mail, which is transcribed by Google and emailed to you along with the recording. (sweet)

The service seems targeted towards people with more that one phone number. It gives them the ability to have “1″ number that the world can call to reach them, and that number is completely divorced from any phone company. It also unifies all these numbers under a single (and very slick) voice mail system. For the past 7 years I have had only “1″ number, my cell phone. So adding a Google Voice layer to that seems like an needless hassle.

In my case the Call announce features where not helpful. When I get a call I already know on my cell phone the number that is calling me from Caller ID. When Google Voice sends down a call, it passes the caller ID for that call on down the line. Ergo I had no ideal if the call I was getting originated from a direct dial to my cell phone, or as a forward from Google Voice. Not knowing how the call was handled before it rang my cell phone was an aggravation. If an unknown call had originated through Google Voice, I could answer the phone, listen to the caller identify themselves and choose to accept the call or send them to voice mail. However if the call had NOT originated through Google Voice then answering the call would have required I speak to them, or if I choose to “ignore” the call it would then go into my cell phone providers voice mail thus negating those cool Google Voice voicemail features.

The work around of course would be to turn off my cell phone voice mail (difficult, but not impossible) and have my cell phone number unpublished so that ONLY calls to my cell phone originate through Google Voice. You can turn on and off Caller ID passthrough in the settings, but then all calls from Google Voice look like her are coming from Google Voice.

As I said, I do not think I am the best test candidate to evaluate Google Voice.

I was VERY impressed that I could get a Google Voice Number local to Crossville Tennessee. (931) 287-9287. In fact it seems all (931) 287-9xxx numbers are Google Voice allocations for local dialing in Frontier Communications system. As I write this, I was only able to find one other listing in Crossville using a Google Voice number, “Home Security Crossville”. For what it’s worth it seems Google has gotten that block of numbers from Sprint, and they are “assigned” to Monterey Tennessee, which is in Putnam County. So the numbers may very well be “local” to Cookeville Tennessee as well. This is impressive because I have fought hand, tooth, and nail to get some manor of VOIP or “alternative” phone service is Crossville for years.

I do have some ideals that I think would make Google Voice a much better product.

1. True VOIP integration. Google has a voice Chat system built into Gtalk. It would seem like an easily thing to integrate desktop clients, mobile clients, and even hardware VOIP handsets, into the Google Voice Structure. Incoming calls could be routed to your Gtalk client, or Gtalk could call out with you Google Voice Number. As an added bonus Google could buy Skype. Skype is a full feature VOIP service eBay acquired a couple of years ago, but are now looking to sell.  The last word was that the original Skype creators (the same people who created Kazza, the scourge of the RIAA ) were looking to “buy-back” the spun off Skype from eBay. The benefit to Google for buying Skype would be the rich VOIP software, network, and hardware device infrastructure already being run by Skype. Even providing SIP access into Google Voice would give it Vonage like qualities.

2. Cell Phone Voice Mail integration. Most if not all cell phones allow you to manually set your voicemail provider. This comes pre-programed for the voicemail of your cell company, which is in most cases the same flavor of Nortel voicemail rebranded. There are companies like Youmail.com that provide the ability to host your cellphone voicemail on a far superior system. The way these voicemail systems work is to provide your handset with a number that the incoming call is routed to should you happen not to answer the phone, the phone is not turned on, or out or rang of a tower. This number receives the call which has your cell phone number tagged on it. Using your cellphone number the call is routed to your voicemail box and the call is processed from there (in most cases “processing” means “leave a message”). While is the case for cells phones, most landline hosted voicemail system work off the same premiss. It seems easy for Google to provide a number so that cell phone handsets could use Google Voice’s voicemail. This way even unanswered direct dial calls to cell phones or landlines (with voicemail features) can be processed by the Google Voice voicemail.

3. Google Apps. Google Apps is the hosted domain based email, calendar, google docs, collaboration system. Think of it as gmail for businesses. Google Voice could be used to provide a simple “Virtual PBX” to small businesses and non-proffits. A call to a Google Voice number could route calls to several people based on name. “Thank you for calling TCG, press 1 for McKinley, press 2 for Daniel, press 3 for Rebecca” etc, etc. While on a call flowing across Google Voice, some key combo like ## could put the caller on hold, and give prompts to you for passing the call to another number, or for sending to voicemail. Calls rules could be made to allow fall over from user to user like having a call center. Google could even monazite this by providing advertising during periods were a caller is on hold.

I have to admit, these are kind of my nerd-nava wishes for Google Voice. I  know that Google has a pretty big VOIP infrastructure because of there Goog411 service. That is a 411 service offered by Google, were people can call a toll free number, and use voice recognition to source out business contacts. The caller is then offered to be connected for free to the number they find. These calls are being passed via VOIP. Let’s face it, if you are paying a national long distance bill in 2009 then the fault is yours alone. There is no reason for it and thousands of ways to avoid it. If the phone companies had wised up 10 years ago and abolished long distance, they be making more money now.

I know I for one would pay $$$ for a Google Apps enabled service with hosted voicemail as described above.

It’s August and here in the South we often call these the “Dog Days”. While I’ve never gotten a strait answer out of my antecedents as to why we call these the “Dog Days”, I can only imagine that stems from the hopelessness we see in dogs because of the oppressive heat.

I have to admit I’m feeling some of that hopelessness right now.

This year has seen a series of victories for the forces opposed to freedom and innovation, in favor of status-quo greed at the expense of the helpless.

The events that have trigger my blasé attitude occurred in a specific order, but in my mind they have become a jumble, so here they are in no specific order.

The RIAA litigation victories. The Music Cartels really have done it. They managed to finically obliterate two families trying to show them up pas “examples” to all those who dare fight their dubious (and I feel illegal) “settlement” camping. I recently read a powerful analogy showing that committing Second Degree Murder is less finically devastating to a perpetrator than what the RIAA is doing. To rub salt into the wound, the Obama administration is supporting these actions by the RIAA. I expected more from a person use used “hope” as a campaign slogan.

The Pirate Bay. The blow was the convection of the founders of the Pirate Bay by a Swedish court. The “crime” which they are found guilty of was “accessory to commit copyright violations”. But the prosecutors never fully established the underlying crime. To me this is extremely dubious, boarding on the notion of P.K. Dicks “pre-crime”. Aside from the Pirate Bay case, it seems more and more that police and prosecutors are shortcutting the law and trying to find ways of silencing people they find undesirable.

SCO and Novell. I had hoped this case was over. SCO perhaps as much as the RIAA represents the worst aspects of Corporate America. This company no longer makes, dells, or supports products, they only exist now to litigate the issue of who “owns” Unix. Just this week we have seen the 10th Circuit Court of apples overturn a 2007 ruling that stated Novell owned Unix. Now the issues has to go before a Utah jury. I’m still hoping that 12 men and women can shut down SCO and Darl McBride for good this time. Of course I care little about Unix, but the under pinnings of this trail are that if SCO wins they are going to resume their litigation ageist the free and open source Linux. SCO will not benefit from that, but Microsoft will, and Microsoft has been pumping money into SCO for some time. When or lose I think SCO will go bankrupt and go away (bankrupt as in “go out of business” not the bankrupt “we restructuring” that they are currently in), but the ramifications of them winning are to terrible to think about.

Steve Jobs and Apple really are evil. This one hurt just about as much as finding out that the Obama administration is in bed with the RIAA. I’ve always known that Steve Jobs personally was a less-than-pleasant person. He’s hyper competitive and somewhat neurotic, and seems cultivate a cult of personality around him with like minded people. But that’s been ok with me and millions of other Apple fans/owners. However now that Apple has a lead in a market, smartphone with the iPhone, the authoritarian practices of Apple are starting to rub me the wrong way. I really feel hurt and betrayed by this. On the one hand I enjoy the seamless integration and easy of use that Apple Products offer, but on the other hand it dumbfounds me that some things take forever to get from Apple. (Like 2 years to get cut-copy-paste on the iPhone). On the Windows/Linux side of the world, this is not such an issue because being open, if a vendor does not give me the features I want (for example: my iPhone streaming from my iTunes Library like my AppleTV), then third party developers can come in and provide those features. The iPhone is so closed however that to get these features you MUST get them from Apple. To compound the problem Apple makes these ridiculous statements about how “Jail-breaking” your iPhone is akin to being a terrorist.  Apples suite with Psystar is also a good example of using litigation as an anti-compeavtive tool. Apple could just as easily “break” all of the hackentosh clones with software updates. But rather than try to better their product, Apple’s army of lawyers have to justify their billable hours by suing a two bit company making sub-standard computers.

Aside from computers, I think the absurd allegations being bantered around the Healthcare debate are also wearing on me. Ignorance is a tiresome thing for the intelligent to abide. I am also settling in for a protracted battle with the State of Tennessee over imminent domain.

I’m hoping that the last quart of the year can seem some improved situations. Perhaps we’ll see VOIP services accelerate the demise of traditional phone companies. I’m hoping that the new Credit Card reform bill might start to rope in that industry. There is still a chances that the economic down turn will force some of these big companies to change their practices. At least I for one am no longer sending my consumer dollars to them.

Footnote: After some Wikipedia work, I discovered exactly why we call these the “Dog Days”. It comes from the prevalence of Sirius, the dog star, in the late summer sky. Wikipedia is both a blessing and a sadness in that it gives me craved information, but at the expense sometimes of childhood legends and mystique.