Google Voice – First Look

I remember the days when knowing about a new Google service was like knowing a secret treasure.

I remember the days when people used their all contacts to get a Gmail invitation, like I had to ask a stranger  in a Cybercafe to invite me on Gmail .

I remember the days when we eagerly waited for months to get Google Wave Invitation, like after waiting a long time for Google Wave invitation finally I gave up and posted a note on Facebook that I needed an invitation, fortunately  my one friend in Germany had few left so he invited me on Google Wave.

But I think time has changed. All my excitement turned into disappointment when no one in my friends group (including me) could find any meaningful use of Google Wave, and finally we all stopped using it.

Just to make things worse for themselves, Google played Google Buzz joke with everyone. In India we have been using Orkut (its also owned by Google) for long time, so finding that another social networking utility has been added to our Gmail accounts without our permission was rather offensive and also useless.

Yes it took some time to figure out how to remove Buzz from Gmail account, but finally most of us got success in removing it (although few opted to keep it).

So this time when I got to know about Google Voice I didn’t feel any excitement like old times. I filled the online invitation form and forgot about it (you can fill an invite form at this link – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ ).

Currently I am in USA on a business trip, and while being in US, suddenly last week I got an invitation mail from Google Voice. So fortunately I had chance to explore Google Voice and test its features.

I accepted the invitation and created my Google voice account last week. After using Google Voice for one week I can just say one thing very confidently that GOOGLE IS BACK… yes and this time Google is back with a bang.

This is one another revolutionary service which is going to change the way we have been using our phones. Now phone is going to be tightly connected with internet and it will open a new horizon by making it possible to take direct benefit of any progress made in the Internet technology  by using our phones.

Those who think that Google Voice is just another VoIP service are wrong.  Google Voice is NOT JUST ANOTHER VoIP SERVICE, it’s a lot more than VoIP. Google Voice will add a whole new dimension in the way telephones work today.

Key Features -

1. Now you can change your existing phone number/plan/operator without worrying  about distributing your new number or without spending any money to keep your existing number. Because your Google Voice number will remain same and you just need to change your Google Voice setting to forward your calls to new phone number.
2. Same call will ring on multiple phones. So same call will give you ring on your office number, home number and mobile number. Just pick the phone which is nearest to you without losing any call.
3. All Voicemails will be Transcribed and will be emailed to you. Therefore even if you are out of home and your mobile dies (like if battery ended) you can still access your Voicemails over the internet (either read the transcription or listen to it by playing the original recording).
4. All Voicemails will always remain stored online like your emails, no worry to ever lose them even if you throw your phone away and chose a new phone with new operator.
5. ALL CALLS WITHIN USA ARE FREE.
6. ALL SMS WITHIN USA ARE FREE.
7. If you have multiple phones, choose which call should land to which phone. So now your girlfriends call will always land only on your mobile handset while calls from your parents will ring on all phones including your office and home phones.
8. Call international numbers on very decent rates ( I wont call them low rates like Google ads because calling India costs 6cents/mnt however skype is offering its 120 mnts subscription which costs less than 3cents/mnt and other VoIP services are offering it as low as 1.5cents/mnt). Check the Google Voice call rates at – https://www.google.com/voice/rates .
9. Record your incoming calls by just pressing 4 on your phone key pad. Recording will be stored in Google Voice account.
10. Download your Voice-mail or recorded phone call from your Google Voice account as a MP3 file (no external software needed).

Setting Up Google Voice Account -

As soon as I opened my GV account (from now onwards we will refer Google Voice as GV), first thing it does is that it asks you to either associate your existing phone number with GV or get a new free phone  number (or call it a GV number if you wish to be technically correct) from GV.

First thing I want to clarify at this point is that both of these options are currently only based on American phone numbers. So if you would like to associate your existing phone number, it needs to be an USA phone number, if you opt for taking a new GV number that again will be an US phone number.

Phone number of any other country is not supported (although you may find some workaround on Internet about activating your GV account without US phone number).

I opted for a new number as this offers more benefit and one more reason is that very soon I will be going back India so my current US number will stop working.

While choosing a GV number you can give your preference and search for matching number, such as I entered 1234 as my preference and I was able to find a number like 234564_ _ _ _, you can also use alphabets to choose a number such as if I enter Ajay, I may get a number like 412-aja-y *** (which is 412-252-9***) . Yes Google has used the common sense while offering the numbers which will definitely make it easier to remember and also keep you happy with your favorite number.

This GV number will be like any normal US phone number, so you can think that you are getting an US phone number for free.

Now comes the second part, you need to associate some real US phone with this GV number. So whenever someone calls you on your GV number that call will be forwarded to your actual phone, or when someone sends you SMS on this GV number that sms will be stored on your GV account and also will be forwarded to your actual phone.

I would like to repeat that you can associate only a US phone number with your GV account  because Google does not forward calls to any other international phone number.

Once you associate a phone number with GV account, you need to confirm that attached number belongs to you. Google will call you on your number and you will need to enter a security code on your phone, which is given by GV. This makes sure that you enter a valid phone number and also that it’s a phone which you can access ( you can not use fake numbers or phone number of anyone else). Also you can not associate one phone number with more than one GV accounts.

Once you have associated at least one phone number with your GV account and have chosen to forward your calls and SMSs to that number, your GV account setup is complete and now you can start using GV features.

Google Voice Functionality-

1) Receiving Calls

When someone calls on your GV number (it can be dialed from any US number or from any other country using 001 code before your number) it will be forwarded to your associated real phone number. You can associate more than one number with your GV account and choose one or more number on which your incoming calls should land.

Therefore lets say  if you associate three phones to receive calls, all incoming calls will ring bell on all three phones, you can pick either of them

2) Making Calls -

Making  any call and sending SMS within USA is FREE. When you dial a number, GV will ask you to choose  one of your associated phones using which you want to connect this call, once you choose your phone, GV will first call your number, once you pick the call GV will call the other number and then both of you will get connected. If you have used WebEx to make conference calls you know how it works.

However if you are using a phone in which incoming is not free, then even on a free call within US you will be using your minutes for incoming call. However if incoming is free on your phone only then GV will make your call actually free.

You can also call any International number  (non-USA phone number), but that is not free and you will need to buy credits from GV.

3) Online Voicemails -

This is one of many great features of GV, if someone calls you on your GV number and if you could not pick up your phone, that call will go to Voice mail (like our normal phones). As soon as someone leaves a voice mail to you, that voicemail is sent to your mobile and also it gets stored on your GV account. You can open your GV account and listen to it on using Internet. GV also Transcripts your voice mail into text and you can get this text emailed to your email account.

Therefore no more need to access voicemails only using phone, you can have it stored online and access it any time.

I wont make this blog any longer, now its time for you to go and explore Google Voice yourself. Google Voice opens endless possibilities in the phone market, at least in USA. We will have to wait to see if it also comes to other countries.

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How to Boost Performance of Computer using Auslogics BoostSpeed 4.

BoostSpeed is a wonderful suite of system utilities provided by Auslogics (http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/boost-speed), it has got 18 different system utilities neatly categorized for different purposes.

Auslogics claims that BoostSpeed can increase overall computer performance by 10%-100%.

Now lets check how exactly this software works and what all different utilities it comes with.

Although different utilities can be accessed directly from the start menu, BoostSpeed provides us a ‘BoostSpeed Integrator’ where you will find all different tools categorized according to different maintenance task.

One Button Checkup –

This option will run Disk Cleanup, Registry Cleanup, Disk Defrag and System protection utilities.

Disk Cleaner –

Disk Cleaner will scan partitions of hard drive for unwanted files and folders and will help you in cleaning up your pc. You can select different categories which needs to be checked.

Disk Defrag –

A great and extremely fast defrag utility provided by BoostSpeed. You will be amazed to see the performance of this tool.

Computer Clean Up –

Under this category we get different cleanup utilities and also utility to uninstall applications and also to control Computer Start-Up applications and services.

* Auslogics Disk Cleaner – A free and better alternative is CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/).

* Auslogics Registry Cleaner – A free and better alternative is ‘RegCleaner by Jouni Vuorio’.

* Auslogics Uninstall Manager – A free and better alternative is Revo uninstaller (http://www.revouninstaller.com/).

* Auslogics StartUp Manager – A free and better alternative is ‘RegCleaner by Jouni Vuorio’.

Computer Optimization –

Here you will get all different optimization and defrag tools.

* Auslogics Disk Defrag – This is also available for free (http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag) , however better alternative is O & O defrag ( http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodefrag/index.html) .

* Auslogics Registry Defrag

* Auslogics Internet Optimizer

* Auslogics Memory Optimizer

Computer Privacy and Security –

If you are worried about your privacy, in this section you will get tools to erase all traces of file usages.

* Auslogics Track Eraser

* Auslogics PC Security

* Auslogics File Shredder

* Auslogics Disk Wiper

Information and Control –

Here you will get tools to get different system related information, however you can also change few system settings using Tweak Manager and Service Manager.

* Auslogics Tweak Manager

* Auslogics Service Manager

* Auslogics System Information

* Auslogics Task Manager

Windows Tools –

This is a section which shows few system tools which are actually part of Windows operating system, however these are rarely used by users because most of the users are not even aware about these tools.

* Microsoft DirectX Diagnostics

* Windows Performance Monitor

* Windows Service Manager

* Computer Management

If you make any change using any of these tools, you can go to File>Rescue Center and rollback the changes made by BoostSpeed.

This helps you to restore the system if you made some wrong changes.

After looking at the tools given in BoostSpeed you will very soon feel that this is one of the most complete and best collections of system tools.

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How To Split Files

How often it has happened with you that you wanted to take a file from your office computer or from your friend’s computer to your home computer, but file size is so big that you cannot copy the complete file on you pen drive.

That is that moment when we start looking for an option to split a large file into small manageable chunks, which can be easily uploaded or copied to the external storage device like CD, DVD or USB drive.

Let’s check few of the options available in this scenario.

File Splitter Application –

In this category we can put those applications which are specially designed for the purpose of splitting and joining files.

We can find a lot of applications for this purpose but two best applications are these:

1)      WhitSoft File Splitter :-

This is one of the oldest but the best available file splitter application.

It has got everything which will make you fall in love with it . It is free, it is only 41 KB in size ( Yes this is not a typing mistake, WhitSoft File Splitter is only 41 kb in size), it can split and join files and does not need to be installed.

You can either choose from the predefined files sizes from the list or type any size you want to define for each piece of file.

It comes with radio buttons to choose between Split or Splice.

Once you use it to split a file, it will create files with extension 001, 002, 003 and so on depending on the number of pieces.

Files created by both ‘HJSplit’ and ‘WhitSoft File Splitter’ are compatible with each other, so they can be joined using any of these softwares.

However to join pieces of file, it’s necessary to have either of these software on the other machine.

If you are looking for just a plain and simple splitter, nothing can be better than this.

2)      HJSplit :-

Another free utility with many features. HJSplit v2.3 is 306 kb in size and does not need to be installed.

It provides following features –

A)     File Split

B)     File Join

C)     File Compare

D)     File Checksum

It’s very easy and professional looking software, and it allows you to define custom size for each piece of the output file.

Like WhitSoft File Splitter, after splitting HJSplit also creates files with extension 001, 002, 003 and so on depending on the number of pieces.

Files created by both ‘HJSplit’ and ‘WhitSoft File Splitter’ are compatible with each other, so they can be joined using any of these software.

However to join pieces of file, it’s necessary to have either of these software on the other machine.

3)      JASP (Just Another File Splitter) –

Another tiny tool (300 Kb size), which comes for free and does its work perfectly. JASP allows you to set many of its configurations, the best thing about this software is that it creates a batch file which joins files at the destination.

Therefore we do not need to have JASP installed (yes it can not be run directly from exe, it needs to be installed) on the destination machine and files can be joined by simply double clicking the batch file created by JASP.

However personally I will not recommend using JASP because –

a)      It needs to be installed can not be run directly from the exe, and it also adds itself to shell, so you will find on more entry in your right click menu.

b)       Difficult to find and download. I don’t know why but this software was not available on its aurther’s site (http://www.aadima.com/downloads/jasp16.zip), some how after searching a lot I could find it on the server of freeware files .

c)      Using a custom size for file chunk requires you to set it in settings, this makes it a bit difficult to use different file sizes for pieces of file.

4)      How to Split file using WinZip –

Yes our old friend WinZip can also split files for us, and its also very easy to use.

First compress a file and create a zip file, now go to Actions Menu> Split option. Now specify file name and size of pieces and click OK.

That’s all, you will get your large file divided into small pieces of specified size. When you want to join them, simply extract the archive using the main zip file and it will automatically join all chunks.

5)      How to split file using WinRar –

Right click on the file or folder which you want to compress and split using WinRar, now select option ‘Add to Archive’.

This will open an ‘Archive name and parameter’ window; here you will have option of set ‘Split to volumes’ setting.

Now specify the size for each piece of file.

At the destination you will need to extract the main .rar file and it will automatically join all pieces while extracting the file.

6)      How to split file using 7zip –

Process of splitting a file using 7-zip utility is almost same as the processed used with Winrar.

Right click on the file or folder which you want to compress and split using 7-zip, now select option ‘Add to Archive’.

This will open an ‘Archive name and parameter’ window; here you set ‘Split to volumes’ option.

At the destination you will need to extract the main file and it will automatically join all pieces while extracting the file.

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