Google Voice – Fixing the Cellphone Voicemail Problem

So, I love Google Voice and have been using it for years, ever since it was Grand Central.  Today, I finally figured out how to reign in the problem with voicemails showing up in either my cell phone voicemail or my Google Voice voicemail.  It was starting to become unbearable to have to check both places for voicemails that were left when people dialed my GVoice number.  Here’s what causes the problem:  When someone dials my Google number and I click ignore, or am out of service coverage, my Sprint voicemail kicks in early causing Google to think that Ive picked up the phone meaning that the calls are connected straight to my Sprint voicemail and then they would leave a message there.  If I was in service but just let the phone ring, Google would time out knowing that I hadn’t picked up in which case the caller would be connected to my Google voicemail.  Depending on where I was or what I was doing, voicemails could have ended up in either place.  Depending on your cell phone carrier you have to enable two or three types of call fowarding so that if you click Ignore on your phone, are out of service or have your phone off, your cell carrier will forward the calls to your GVoice number.  If you are on Sprint, the forwarding service is 20 cents per minute while the person is leaving you a voicemail.  For me, that cost is worth it so that I dont go crazy tracking down voicemails anymore.  I believe it is free on the other carriers.  For instructions on enabling this feature for the various carriers, click here.

Wolfram Alpha – A How-To Guide

Wolfram|Alpha, launched a little over a week ago, has gotten a huge amount of attention online and many people are saying that they don’t feel like they know how to utilize this new search engine’s full potential.  Here are a few tips that could help you get what you are seeking out of the “computational knowledge engine”.

1. Use Keywords

   The Wolfram Research group did a great job developing its natural-language interpreter which can take in human friendly questions and interpret them as search queries.  The thing is, the skills we’ve learned searching Google using keywords all these years still come in handy when searching Wolfram|Alpha.  If you phrase your question or search term carefully, you will get a more accurate answer as a result.  In some cases, it wont matter what you type because as long as Wolfram|Alpha can understand the query, the answer will be the same, but you can still save some time and typing by using keywords.  For example, you could type:

   ozs. to lbs.

   or you could type:

   How many ounces are in a pound?

   The result will be the same.

2. Make Sure it Can Be Computed

   Wolfram|Alpha is not a search engine in the way that we have come to understand them.  It is more like a math engine that can take in questions/queries and compute the answer by referencing a massive database containing trillions of data points.  If there is no computational nature to your question or if there is no source for the data you are looking for, Wolfram|Alpha will respond with:

   Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.

For Example, “how many beers in a keg” cannot be calculated by Wolfram|Alpha because “beer” is not a specific enough measurement and Wolfram|Alpha cannot be sure what you are referring to.  However, if you phrase the question like this:

fluid ounces in a keg of beer / 12 oz. cup

Wolfram|Alpha will calculate the number of ounces in a keg of beer and then divide that by 12 ounces because that is the typical amount of beer in a cup.  The answer would look like this:



Now I know there are 165.3 beers in my keg.


3. If it’s Measured in Terms of Numbers, it’s Probably Indexed

   Wolfram|Alpha can display information on all sorts of things like weather, stocks, even trends for these things like average human growth rate.  You see, weather isn’t measured by whether its sunny or cloudy, that is all deduced by things like temperature, barometric pressure, etc.  Date can also be used as a reference point, so the point is that when you search Wolfram|Alpha for:

   weather in san francisco ca on July 20th 1982

   Wolfram|Alpha will look up all weather related data points it has in its database for San Francisco on the date of July 20th 1982.

   Stocks are another good example for a Wolfram|Alpha search query because they are charted by their stock value based on whatever exchange they are traded on.  It is purely numerical and can therefore be used in searches and comparisons on Wolfram|Alpha.  To search for a stock just type its ticker symbol in the search bar, or multiple symbols separated by commas if you would like to see a charted comparison.
   Such as:

   DJIA,NYSE:V

   For an example of how there are certain “odd data points” that can be referenced, check out this query:

   how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

   I recommend you check out the example page here for other ideas on things you can search for.

Wolfram Alpha – A New Kind of Search Engine

There is another search engine, which is about to go live Today at 7pm CST, which is rumored to have advanced functionality beyond Google’s capabilities.  Anyone remember Cuil?  The useless search engine that had it’s five seconds of fame due to the claim that because they indexed more sites than Google, their search results would be more accurate?  Well, there is a new challenger about to enter the ring and its called Wolfram|Alpha.  So is this the next search engine release that will be forgotten by the end of the summer?  Well with Stephen Wolfram heading up this project, I should think not.

Stephen Wolfram

A true prodigy, Wolfram published an article on particle physics when he was 16.  He received significant notoriety for his paper on heavy quark production when he was 17.  He then received his Ph.D. in particle physics from Caltech by the time he was twenty at which time he also joined the faculty of that institution.  That was in 1979.  I skipped many other accomplishments that happened in-between those years, but covering his entire career would be an article in itself.

In 1986 Wolfram began developing a computer algebra system, called Mathematica. In 1987 he co-founded a company called Wolfram Research and managed to release the first version of Mathematica by 1988.  In the last 21 years, Mathematica has become a standard computational software package used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields as well as other industries requiring advanced computational capabilities.

So what does all of this have to do with web search?  The Wolfram Research Group has built a search engine which uses mathematica based computation to power its search function.  It allows you to enter a question in human friendly language and it will provide you with an answer.  It doesn’t provide you with a list of search results that may pertain to your search criteria, it actually gives you an answer, based of millions of lines of algorithmic code and trillions of indexed data points.

For example, you could supply it with this:

Wolfram|Alpha, would respond with this:

Premature Conclusion

Its not out yet, and i wont presume to make judgements about this new tool before we’ve had a chance to use it, but i think Wolfram Research has built something here that can really fill a need with regard to current internet information gathering.  It is not a replacement for Google, or anything Google has to worry about, but it looks to be a groundbreaking tool that could become invaluable for some of us.

See a demonstration of Wolfram|Alpha done by Stephen Wolfram Here.

You can watch Wolfram|Alpha being brought online live via webcast tonight at 7 pm CST.  Link Here.

End of Humanity – Kondo Bot Battles

Kindle DX by Amazon

At $489, this is not the cheapest toy you are going to find on the technology market, but it may just be worth its hefty price tag.  What is the one aspect of a mobile content “reader” you would always like more of?  How about more screen real estate…?  The new Kindle has a 9.7 inch electronic paper display.  This brings the Kindle experience closer to actually holding an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, which is essentially the ultimate goal of an eBook reader.  The electronic ink works just like real ink meaning that you don’t need a backlight, eliminating eye strain associated with reading off typical electronic displays.

Auto-rotation seems to be another highly anticipated feature.  Like many of the smart phone devices available today, the Kindle will switch from portrait to landscape mode simply by rotating the actual device.   Personally, I love that feature on my smart phone.

Internal storage capacity appears to have been more than doubled to 3.5 GB.  That may not seem like ton of storage when you think of it in music terms, like an iPod, but 3.5 GB can hold an enormous amount of text.

This device is thinner than a typical magazine and has a free always-on connection for downloading content, using the cell phone data networks.  Just like with the previous Kindle models, you do not have to sign up or pay to use that service.

It has been said that printing the New York times costs roughly twice as much as it would to supply a free Kindle to all of its subscribers.  I wonder how long it will be before that interesting anecdote becomes a reality.  In any case, I would agree that the Kindle along with its now and future competitors will change the way millions of people read anything.

*Prediction* The Kindle will eventually have a touch screen and will become the standard device for signing contracts digitally, without ever needing to print hard copies.