wifitalk.ca

Google has announced that 10 million gmail voice calls have been made to date, and they are offering up some tips for how to make better use of the system. The features they are highlighting are:

1. Call Screening – Caller is sent to voicemail and you can listen in.
2. Switching Calls – Receive a call in gmail, transfer it to your cell
3. Call Recording – Self-explanatory
4. Click-to-Dial Chrome Extension – A new extension for Chrome allows you to click on any phone number in a webpage and use gmail to call it.

Everyone else has already covered the Apple music event, but I thought I’d pull out a little tidbit of information that looks promising for VOIP communication. The new iPod touch looks like it’s got everything needed in order to be a fully stand-alone wifi-only VOIP phone without resorting to jailbreaking.

With home wifi networks being common, the iPod touch could be used as an iPhoneHome.

When the 1st generation touch came out, it lacked any sort of microphone input, there was no external speaker, skype wasn’t available, and there was no such thing as backgrounding an application. This meant that you couldn’t talk to the other person, and your iPod wouldn’t let you know when someone was calling.

The second generation touch offered a mic-in by way of the headphone jack, came with an external speaker, and skype was available at the time too. There was still no non-jailbroken way to get apps to run in the background, but push notifications came around to let inactive apps know that someone was trying to connect. In my experience the push notifications came way too late, and the other person had already hung up. I could always call them back within a few minutes, but that’s not quite acceptable for every day use.

With the 3rd generation and iOS4, we finally got backgrounding. Your VOIP app could sit in the background and let you know instantly that someone was trying to call, just as a regular phone would. Furthermore, iOS4 allowed the wifi to remain connected, even when the device was asleep, which would ensure that your incoming calls got through.

Now, with the 4th generation iPod touch, we finally have an external mic to go along with the external speaker thanks to facetime. So long as you have a wifi connection, you should be able to install a good VOIP client and have your new iPod touch run transparently as a phone. This is a great option for people who live in cities with free public wifi, students who spend most of their time on campus, or for people who want a home-only iPhone.

Of course with other apps, you can use the touch as a remote to control your HTPC through something like Apple’s Remote app, or the new and amazing plex media center app. I could easily see someone spending a few hundred dollars on a single device which can sit in their house, act as their phone, universal remote, music player, and hand-held game system. iPhoneHome indeed.

The @googlevoice twitter has announced that the gmail voice plugin was used to make over 1 million voice calls in its first 24 hours. And this wasn’t even a feature that all gmail users could use. W0w.

I just set up a bbpress forum for the site:

wifitalk.ca forum

Any registered user for the blog automatically is given a forum account with the same username and password. From now on, posts from the blog will create a forum topic, and comments on the blog posts will create posts in the associated forum topic and vice-versa.

Feedback is appreciated.

Google has is now testing a voice call plugin in gmail that allows you to make phone calls to regular numbers for free in Canada and the US using your computer.

This is a separate service from Google Voice, as you do not get a call-in number assigned to you, but if you have a Google Voice account and someone calls that number, you can set up Google Voice to notify you in gmail. It is great news that you don’t need a Google Voice account in order to take advantage of this service as this means that users outside the US can take advantage of it. This undoubtedly is a product stemming from Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5.

I am in Canada and have two gmail accounts. One is tied to a Google Voice account using the method outlined here, and the other doesn’t have a Google Voice account tied to it. I have just enabled the voice call plugin for the gmail account that doesn’t have Google Voice tied to it from Canada, so I can confirm that it works outside the US.

This is a direct shot at Skype. Skype charges $3.95 USD to make unlimited calls to any phone number in Canada and the US. Google just offered this exact same service for free, without the need to use a separate app – it is just a plugin for your browser.

The pop-up notification states “Free calls to the US and Canada in 2010″ so it seems that for now this is temporary, but because Google Voice offers free calls in the US and Canada, it may persist.

I also just tried it with both google accounts and can report the following:

1. If you have a Google Voice account, the caller ID displayed on the receiver’s phone will be your Google Voice number.

2. If you do NOT have a Google Voice account, the caller ID displayed on the receiver’s phone will be some number from California.

This is a personal note: My phone contract is now up, and I still don’t know who I’m going with… Hmmm.

Rogers is now in on the 6 GB smartphone data plan for $30 with iPad sharing now too, except sharing costs an additional $20 instead of the $10 it costs with Bell, and is only available on 3-year contracts as opposed to being available on all post-paid accounts.

Adding reasonable data plans like this is a step in the right direction, but the fact that you have to add it to a voice plan is rather annoying, and the fact that it costs an extra $20 to access that bandwidth from another device is just a plain old money grab.

theboygeniusreport got their hands on a Bell memo indicating that they are going to offer a 6GB data plan add on for all post-paid voice-only subscriptions that can be shared with an iPad on the same account for an additional $10.

The nice thing for iPad users is you no longer have to pay for an entirely separate plan (which made no logical sense anyways), and moves to a more customer/data centric way of charging for service, as opposed to a device/data method.

It makes sense from a consumer point of view to pay a carrier a certain fee for the ability to use a certain amount of bandwidth, irregardless of device, so we should give Bell a thumbs-up on this one.

It looks as though the cheapest Bell plan is still $30 a month, so to get a plan like that, add $30 for the 6 GB of data, and then turn your smartphone into a 3G VOIP device will still cost you $60.

What I am still trying to decipher is if it works on a shared family plan. The memo mentions that “Members (mates)” are eligible, but it is unclear whether both parties are able to share the data. It could make for a nice family plan add-on – $20×2 = $40 for the voice, and then $30 for the 6 GB of data = $70 for a 3G VOIP plan split between two people.

The cult of Mac is reporting today that the iPhone will be coming to T-Mobile.

Referencing a source high up in T-Mobile’s organization, they claim an 80% chance that iPhones will be available on T-Mobile by the end of Q3 this year (late September). Deutsche Telekom, carrier of the iPhone in Germany and T-Mobile’s parent company, was rumoured to have influence in the deal.

This could be very good news for Wind Mobile as their relatively thin offering of phones is due to them being on the 3G-AWS band, which is slightly different from the standard 3G bands that most carriers operate on. T-Mobile is also on the AWS band, which means that if the iPhone is going to work for T-Mobile, it will work for Wind.

The iPhone 4 doesn’t list the AWS band in its specs, but it could be that the phone is indeed capable of operation on the appropriate frequencies and that they just aren’t listed. Unlocking the phone (which hasn’t been done yet), and trying a T-Mobile (or Wind) SIM would be the first test.

Many have suggested that Verizon would be the next likely candidate once the AT&T exclusivity contract runs out, but for now Verizon runs a CDMA network, while the iPhone is a GSM phone. However, Verizon is upgrading to LTE in the fall, and it looks like it will be a GSM network, so this CDMA argument could be moot.

Skype has released an updated version of their iPhone app, complete with iOS4 features such as multitasking. This seems to be a fixed update, following the error which caused Skype to recently disappear from all iTunes app stores. Now you can make and receive Skype calls on your iPhone seamlessly as you can leave the app running in the background. Previously, the app would have to be running and active in order to receive a call, crippling its ability to be used as a regular phone line.

This also paves the way for very usable, very cheap calling on the iPhone, especially if you use an iPad 3G SIM to get a data-only iPhone plan.

Skype has been under some pressure from its userbase of late to add this functionality, as it has been anticipated for a while now and incorporates some very important usability features. Impatient users have resorted to tying their Skype accounts to Fring, a third-party app that acts as a front-end for many communications programs and protocols and is kept very up to date. Skype and Fring recently got into a battle of words over video chatting over the Skype network on the new iPhone.

In addition, Skype has canceled its plans to begin charging a small monthly fee for 3G calls, instead keeping that functionality free. You will however still have to pay for a Skype-In number and Skype-Out credit, but those can be had for very low rates considering what you can do with them.