Sean Shadmand

Google Voice: A look around

Finnaly got the invite tonight from Google Voice, Googles completly free phone forwarding and voice mail service. Google voice is the new version of what was fromerly known as grand central. The servcie lets you choose a phone number and all calls made to that number are forwarded to a number of your choice, be it cell phone, home phone or work. There are a good deal of options and setting that come with this service and overall it seems to be a pretty cool evolution in phone messaging. Phone VM transcription services and magaement systems have been around for years but as usual Google has made this service free now so other small businesses will be hard pressed to beat that bottom line.

One great feature is the transcription service for all voice mails. When a user calls and leaves a voicemail message Google takes the voice stream and converts it to text. You can then read the voice mail via email, text message, through the Google Voice portal or through the downloaded phone application for Android or Blackberry. The transcription works well pretty well most of the time, although it’s not perfect just yet. Phone numbers were deciphered 100% accuratly, so far at least, and you can always play the voice mail along with the text if you have any problems with the transcription. Also, on the phone app the text is higlighted as the voicemail is read to you. If you want multiple numbers going to and from a single number check out vumber.com for multinumber. Note: There is one place that Google Voice charges, international calls.

As far as anyother charges that one could inccur from the phone network, I called T-Mobile and the representative said that many companies in the VM business have worked payments sytems with phone carriers out to make sure although you aren’t chareged for these services you dont abuse the carriers lines either. Of course rates will vary between plans and carriers so make sure you check your plan for details but in my plan I get 500 forwarding minutes during peak time. If thise minutes get used up then forwarding gets counted against my regular minutes, once again only during peak hours. All in all it would take alot of long messsages to go over those limits so I am happy with both sides of the system so far. I will see at the end of this month if what I was told ends up what i see on my bill..

Also, Daniel tunred me on to some cool settings for GSM phones. You can force your carrier to use a third party VM service so all your calls either through Google Voice or through your own personal exsisting number uses the Google Voice VM service. You can find out how to set that up here (http://go.danielodio.com/voice). Bassically dial *004*1[yourVMservicenumber]# (i.e. *004*15551234#) and all future VM calls will be sent to the VM service phone number provided.

Below are some screen shots of the dash board and settings provided by the Google Voice service.

Dashboard inbox diplsay VM messags and their transcriptions. You can send SMS messages and call from your dashboard as well. If you use gmail all your contacts come along with the dashboard so who is calling is not just a phone number but a name and picture could be associated with each entry.

This cool feature below lets you create VM greetings that change depending on who is calling you. Have a professional greeting for unkown and work contact and a fun one for friends.

Send transcriptions to email or via SMS, screen callers or keep calls from ringing your phoen and going straighth to VM with do not disturb option.

Google also has a widget that lets you put a contact me area on yor page so people can call yo without having to know your direct number.

Blogging can help center the mind

With all the fast paced abstract thoughts that can transpire throughout the modern mans workweek I have found yet another reason to continue blogging. I think it has forced me to take my abstract thoughts, that come and go so quickly and have a tendency to linger and repeat in my consciousness, into constructing full thoughts and letting them pass when a blog is posted. It has forced me to train myself to finish thoughts out and take ideas from a very nebulous form into one that is less so by me needing to focus enough on those thoughts and attempt to put them down on paper in some legible format. The fact that these messages will be public forces me to even further examine my thoughts into legible writings so as to not look too crazy. Man it is so much harder then I thought it would be to translate all the things swirling around in my head as some written topic. I am not a good writer but that wont stop me — My fear of writing poorly is what has probably made me such a bad writer today.

I asked an uncle of mine one day to tell m the top three things he thinks made him successful and one of his top three things was “always write what your thinking down”. As he explained it, “it exposes all the holes that your imagination so easily covers up”. So true, I so often propose things verbally and for the most part the propositions work out but since I started catching myself and writing every small to large idea down, and not just as notes. I mean I stop and draw diagrams or spreadsheets and fill in all the holes that end up revealing themselves as concepts become physical structures on paper. I have found so many mistakes or holes so much earlier then usual as a result. I have noticed that the ideas seem to evolve a few times before I present them to my peers and allows me to think about more angles since I have a full system to look at in front of me, let my mind wonder around the core of the idea instead of just try to retain the core itself in my head.

For example, this post has been swirling in my head for weeks. Without this new found hobbie of blogging I would probably have to deal with these thoughts conciously or unconsciously and they never would feel complete. You bring it up on conversation and let others know about your perspective on things but its always just a thought. Now i know the thought has been completed and exists in time and space, almost indefinitely; I can now move on completely. This realization gives me a whole new appreciation for writing that was not impressed upon me as a child. I never really saw the point other then emails, letters and books to write well. But man not being able to construct your thoughts into a written form leaves you feeling incomplete. Your legacy, your feelings are all just inside you if you cant express them in some sort of infinite format like the written word. My kids are going to write a page about something everyday while they are under my house and the will thank me for it later….

BTW another great tip for obsessively ideas swirling around in your head…put a white board up in your room or a notepad next to your bed. You may have heard it before but do it if you find yourself going to bed with sleep or tossing and turning. and just expunge every thought weather its good or bad on paper or as graphics on a boar dand you get so much better sleep. Even just having the board or notepad sitting there eases the mind.

Oh Good, it’s the Downfall of Watchmen

Downfall (with eng subtitles)

This movie was pretty long but all in all I would say it was a good movie. It provoked a new found interest into WWI and the fact the the movie focused all of its attention to the last week or so that Hitler was in power from the perspective of those in the bunker with him in Berlin was interesting. The german guy who played hitler was very convincing and intense and it was eai to watch how faithfully those around him followed him to the end. Without giving to much away the end was almost sureal with the way each officer valued thier lifes and how much tinnel vision fell upon the camp. It was worth seeing and a nice mix of docu/drama.

Watchmen

At first glance I can see many people finding this movie a bit campy at times and unnessacarily perverse or gory. For those that give it a chance and take the movie in has a whole, not only as a parody but a desertation on the human condition, they will get hours of pleasure afterwards in debate and conversation with friends. The movie is set in a aletrnate unniverse where Nixon has been re-elected 8 times vietnam was won and vigilatism became an acceptable government backed measure against war and crime; those vigilantis dawned costumes to protect thier identity. No charatcter has any super powers except for one, Dr. Manhatten. The author does an excelent job at poken fun at man kind at thier unnessacary need for right an wrong. Each character eggegertated a principle of man kind. I feel like one could write a paper on this movie a hundred times over…..My brief character anylization would be The comedian realized that anyone who thought there was a right and wrong was fooling themselves and he acted on what he as a human fealt like doing with no restriction, Royjcak was idealistic to his core and could not comprimise becuase of those ideals weather it was life or death, Teh Night Own was a man who stood on the side lines, Vic thought he knew what was best for humanity and in some ways was right but was to logical to find the passion in life, and to me dr manahatten was Christ or god where he had all the power in the world but never actually did anything when he was needed all looked to him for answers and used him to fight wars he was an impotent giant in was…..like I said one could go for hours on chatacters and the ploty etc but this is a blog post and not a paper so I’ll stop there but there is depth in this movie that can get you thinking if youlet it.

Good

Two Nazi German movies in 1 week. Makes you think a bit about where we hav been as a people. Like Downfall Good depicted a not so tipical depcition of nazi germany. Set in the periphrelas of the WW II era Good gave a glimpse into how basic life was in Nazi Germany. How friends were seperated and a crazy leader reshaped the country and its people through power, elitism, seperation, persuasion, and propeganda. Its easy to say how could anyone do this when it comes to Nazi’sm, whats harder to do is truly try to undertsnad how regular people came to the conclusions they did. The main character was a depiction of how every single comprimise on the smallest of levels can , althought not always, lead to one loss of relatity or belifs. I think the movie tended to jump around a bit to much and didnt flow as much as I would have liked. I personally didnt like the main charcters voice and over timidness, but it may have been impotant too show how his like of passion or ability to be concered with events unfolding led to his life being decided for him and being inndiferent doesnt neecesarily make you good.

“Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one”

– Albert Einstein

Neo Consumerism

The day of charging directly for goods may be back! People are scrambling to figure out ways to make the new mobile phenomenon lucrative and with apple ingeniously associating a credit card and account for each individual along with their iPhone to handle all transactions apple has masterminded the perfect segway to this new consumerism cost structure. With all your credit info on file apple makes it easy fora business to accept a users purchases with no overhead. A business can focus on thier ocntent and thier app and apple takes care of sales a distributions allowing companies to sell apps for only a few bucks and hopefully make up for it all in the amount of churn these simple apps produce. Sort of the same way charging 99cent for a song instead of 15$ for an album in a store apple now has people spending hundreds or even thousands a year on music, the same can go with the new micro payment model for segments of applications and content introduced withe the latest iPhone sdk 3.0.

Now with micro-payemnts that concept of the neo consumer is refining itself yet again. Imagine getting high quality content where more in depth info only costs an additional 10cents. Yeah you’re paying for content when it may have been free but less ads, greater focus and the ability to pick and choose you whats important to you on an adhoc level is way ore costefective and simple the buying a whole newspaper form a stand for over a buck and throiwng half of it away since you only want the sports section. 10 cent is a sneeze for most people and you dont have to open your wallet or input your credit information. Maybe this is what PayPal envisioned for their future in their earlier more mobile days.

Imagine breaking up cost points by actions where an in depth graph can be download and send to your coworkers for 50 cents, extra weapons in games to help defeat your opponents and extra dollar or ecards that costs only pennies on the dollar. Your finances for all purchases are funneled through a single source and sent as a weekly or monthly statement. Pick and choose what content work best for you and pay almost nothing for the thing you specifically want. This could be an interesting revolution in the online charge model.

Easy

Not caring IS easier…and then easier must be better, we believe the easier road is the less rewarding road and ultimately bad……but…if there is a but……doesnt that make easier only bad because harder has a bigger reward.isn’t going after a bigger reward directly or indirectly selfish. What if wanting to do the easier thing is the least selfish option to choose. Maybe ‘good’ and ‘earn’ are all the result of addiction to increasing the higher reward. In this case one can’t discount the easy route and immediate satisfaction that is gained from the easier solution as any worst then the hardr path as it is just a smaller reward proportionally to difficult routes but other than that it is the same relative product.

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

– Robert Browning, 1855

Gehry Up

Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)

Just saw a pretty cool documentry called Sketches of Frank Gehry. Frank gehry is and artist/ architect that is probably most known for his Disney concert hall or the the Guggenheim in Spain. The docuemntry exposes a man who cares nothing fro conformity and captures the essance of entrepenuership. He quits his job as an architect as as he puts it “he has nnever been hapier”

Check out a trailer here or more on imdb here

“May god give us the ability to learn from the past without it resulting in us avoiding the future.”

Me

I got rhythm. I got music. Who could ask for anything more?

Musical Minds on PBS

Just saw Musical Minds on PBS, pretty interesting stuff. The only problem I had with it was that it was to breif..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/musicminds/

Musical Minds examined the inate symbiotic relationship man has with music, more specifically in this peice was the extraemem cases of this relationships. The film is broken up into 4 stories the first about a man having no music bone in his body who was struck by lighting and is now a composer and pinists playing to sell out crowds, the next is an amazing story of a blind autistic boy who began playing piano at 2 and now has the ability to

process music he hears in microseconds and then can play them back, a young man with a bad case of tarets who’s tcks are completly subdoed when playing the drums and finnaly a case of a woman who has amusia which is like color blindness for music, rythm, or melody. Cool show based on the works of Oliver Sacks, who is the man behind the movie awakenings and many of famous books on oddities of extremes of human mental limits such as the man who thought is wife was a hate. This is a fun movie that expores ow deep the connection between man and music go and as oliver pits it, Rythm is the only thng that can not be taken from the core of a man.

Do you or a friend have amusia? Take the test here to find out!: http://www.delosis.com/listening/measure1.html

( I am proud to say I scored 29/30 on both tests )

Catch some peices from the show here:

http://science.discovery.com/videos/musical-genius-color-notes.html