TechCrunch quits iPhone for GoogleVoice

clipped from www.techcrunch.com I’m abandoning the iPhone and AT&T. I will grudgingly pay the $175 AT&T termination fee What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle. Google Voice is a call management service that lets you determine what calls get through to you based on who’s calling and what time of day it is, among other factors. It has amazing features, like automatically transcribing all your voicemails. And you can forward calls to any other phone Google is planning on rolling out number portability, so I can move my mobile phone number to Google Users say goodbye as Apple and AT&T are blocking Google Voice App

I'm glad he mentioned phone number portability - if you read the full article there is a point mentioning that this Google Voice feature essentially turns the iPhone and AT&T into a "dumb pipe" for the Google Voice application. - that's what they want to block.

iPhone no longer 'America's Sweetheart' People are Pissed!

clipped from moconews.net Apple’s iPhone has been able to do no wrong. For two years, it monopolized the industry and has been upheld as the best smartphone out there. Consumers, developers and technology bloggers were enamored. But in an almost indescribably turn of events this week, the tides shifted and the platform’s problems—that have always been there—started eating away at its super smooth touchscreen exterior. It seems that in more numbers than ever, consumers are speaking out against AT&T’s network problems and developers are complaining about Apple’s and AT&T’s inconsistent policies on which applications get approval. That in turn, created more unhappy customers. If indeed the iPhone begins to fade over the next few months, we can trace it back to this week and one event alone. Who knew there would be one catalyst, and the tipping point was going to be the rejection of Google’s Voice application? people got mad. Really, really mad. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wrote today that he’s quitting the iPhone And then Steve Jobs awoke, it had all been a horrible dream...

DYI iPhone Scanner

clipped from lifehacker.com Create an iPhone Document Scanner from Cardboard You might need a scanner every so often, but they're far too big for their occasional usefulness. If you've got an iPhone and some time to cut cardboard, you can ditch some paper and capture documents without the glass bed. University of Cincinnati student Kyle A Koch frequently synced his iPhone and backed up his iPhoto library, but wasn't so hot with the paper and study material organization. Since he knew he was reliable with iPhone images, he put his industrial design studies into practice and crafted cardboard-based docks that elevate the phone just enough to properly frame and capture 8.5x11 documents. You can order a customized, pre-assembled version of Koch's scanner apparatus in cardboard or medium density fibreboard, but Koch also includes a free EPS file for downloading and DIY building. Combined with a universal capture/OCR tool like Evernote and the powerful camera on an iPhone 3G S, it's definitely a work-able scanner solution

Very crafty.

Playing Devil's Advocate with iPhone and Google Voice

clipped from daringfireball.net By John Gruber But does anyone really think AT&T pulls the strings in this relationship? Google Voice doesn’t just interfere with the carrier’s business model, it interferes with Apple’s iPhone business model. Not just AT&T but all iPhone carrier partners pay Apple a hefty subsidy for every iPhone sold, and that subsidy is based on assumptions about how much the average iPhone customer is going to pay in monthly service charges for voice, data, and SMS. And, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, I’m not sure the decision is entirely unreasonable. think about it in terms of Apple’s competition with Google. Google Voice is a mobile phone service provided by the maker of one of the biggest competitors to the iPhone OS What if Google Voice were instead Microsoft Voice? Would you be as surprised then that Apple is discouraging iPhone owners from using the service? Just saying.

Interesting point of view.

Google Voice vs iPhone

clipped from www.techcrunch.com Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core: Official Google Voice App Blocked From App Store Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”. Now comes even worse news: we’ve learned that Apple has blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store. who’s behind the restriction: our old friend AT&T. Google Voice scares the carriers. It allows users to send free SMS messages and get cheap long-distance over Google Voice’s lines. It also makes it trivial to switch to a new phone service, because everyone calls the Google Voice number anyway. John Gruber has confirmed with a trusted source that AT&T is to blame for the Google Voice ban. Apple can point to the App Store’s 50,000 applications all it wants, but how many of them could truly be called groundbreaking? Are they really putting a dent in the universe?

Go to FreeMyPhone.net to do something about it.