There is some good news - Google Voice is finally available on the iPhone. However, the bad news is that it runs on your iPhone’s browser and not as a native application. Google has been trying hard to convince Apple to allow Google Voice on iPhone but, no dice.
Google then simply decided to take the matter into its own hands and developed a web version which can be accessed by any HTML browser running on the iPhone. It is recommended to add shortcuts to your home screen for the most important features such as Dialer, Compose SMS, Inbox and Contacts. Something is better than nothing and Google Voice running on the browser is certainly better than no Google Voice on your iPhone.
Twitter has recently added a local flavor to the popular Twitter Trends service. It’s now possible to select a geographic region to see what’s hot and what’s not in your city or any city of your interest. The current Twitter Local Trends serves 15 major US cities and 5 countries aside from the United States and I’m sure that it’s a matter of time before more countries and cities are added.
This latest offering further strengthens Twitter’s portfolio of location aware services. Last year, it had launched a Geolocation API which helped make twitter applications location aware. For a start, Twitter offered the Local Trends facility to 1% of its user base and I’m lucky to be amongst the chosen ones. From what I’ve seen so far, Local Trends seems to work well without any major issues.
It will be interesting to see how Twitter refines it as it adds more countries and cities.
Hey guys, Federated Media (our advertising partner) is testing out a new widget and they’ve asked us for a little help. It’s a little poll that they’re running simply asking what your favorite wireless carrier is. Mind you, it’s not who you’re currently mortgaging your soul to they’re after, but really rather who your “favorite” carrier is. I don’t want to get into a metaphysical argument about what it can mean to have a favorite you don’t currently patron patronize, so instead I’m just asking you guys to click on a little button.
It’ll make us plenty happy… but of course feel free to skip if this is not the sort of unsolicited nagging you thought you signed up for. Just remember: we don’t do refunds.
The poll is below, and I’m going to leave it up for 4 days.
Our robotic sister site, BotJunkie, has been going strong since last year’s launch… There’s almost more cool robot news than we can keep up with! We kicked off this week with a video of a humanoid robot keeping itself (and us) entertained on a swing set, checked out the latest video of Boston Dynamics’ BigDog robot mule that looking damn funny keeping its footing on ice, watched a dachshund play fetch with a robotic tennis ball slingshot, saw the fastest industrial robot in the world stacking sausages, and got introduced to the Samsung Hauzen VC-RE70V vacuum robot, which could be a serious contender in the currently Roomba dominated robot vacuum arena. Oh, and in case you haven’t been keeping up, we’ve also recently posted about the latest Wall-E trailer (a must-see, trust me), watched the Army’s Crusher UGV drive over cars without noticing, and enjoyed (somewhat skeptically) a demonstration of a robot designed to massage your boobs.
You might have heard by now, but Amazon just released its attempt at resuscitating the e-book market with an amazing little device called Kindle. It’s got a truckload of really cool features, like auto-updates through EVDO, with the cellular service included permanently with your purchase. While the device itself looks like it’s been hit with the ugly stick a couple times, Amazon has streamlined the content delivery system so well that this may become the “iTunes for books”. And, yeah, we’re part of the blogs Amazon offers a subscription to!
So, this little post is to let you know we’re currently ranked #4 in “Gadgets, PCs and Consumer Electronics” and #14 in “Internet and Technology”. That’s unacceptable, people! Sure, pretty much no one actually owns a Kindle yet (since they’re just now being delivered), so the numbers are bound to change. But still. For $2 a month, you can have OhGizmo! content loaded up on your Kindle, ready to read while eating your bagels or buttery toasts or whatever it is you guys eat in the morning. Sure, you could read it for free right on your PC, but what kind of a gadget freak would that make you? Huh? So let’s get these numbers rolling.
You know it. It’s that time of year again. You’ll be looking for gift ideas. We’re there to help. Andrew’s going to be doing Year 2 of the awesome OhGizmo! Christmas Countdown. Me, I’m writing a weekly post for Federated Media’s Holiday Gadget Guide, sponsored by Windows Mobile. With writers from CrunchGear, BoingBoing Gadgets and UberGizmo (to name just a few), it’s got tons of interesting suggestions. All these guys writing together? Man, it all sort all feels like a cheery Holiday gift-idea-generating family. Or something like that.
I’ll be posting partial articles here on OhGizmo!, with a link to read the full one, every now and again.
And stay tuned for our very own version of the same.
Related Tags: Cellphones, Google
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