If you are an international Google Voice user then beware of clicking the little “upgrade your account” button from within Google Voice. Doing so may render your ability to access the Google Voice web site obsolete.
If you’re not in the US and you want to add credit to your account, make sure that you DON’T CLICK the “Upgrade your account” button from Google Voice. This feature is only useful if you are in the US, since it lets you get a Google Voice number. Unfortunately, if you click on that button and you’re not in the US, you’ll no longer be able to buy credit.
There does not appear to be an easy way to downgrade your account once you have opted for the upgrade. The Google Operating System article does mention the upgrade may be cancelled by using a U.S. based web proxy server but that is a little cumbersome for the average non-techie internet user.
All is not totally lost however. Although the Google Voice web site itself becomes inaccessible, phone calls initiated from within Gmail still appear to function. Hopefully Google will fix this and simply hide the “upgrade your account” button from international users. Doing so will create less confusion and not cause users to inadvertently prohibit access to their own accounts.
If you have secondary email addresses tied to your Gmail account, using one of them to “send from” on your iPhone and/or iPad is not a straightforward process. Nick Cernis did the research and figured out a way to make it work, although be prepared for a somewhat tedious process to make it all happen:
The short version is that you just list your email addresses separated by a comma in the Address field of the mail settings on your iPhone/iPad. Sounds simple, but it turns out to be important that you follow certain steps in order, and that you set your Gmail address up as an IMAP account, not a Gmail account. If you’re already utterly confused, read on as I attempt to deconfuddle you.
Nick does an exceptional job breaking down each and every step, presenting screenshots to make it as user-proof as possible. Although nobody has mentioned anything of the sort, I really do hope iPhone OS 4.0 solves this problem. There should not be a need to jump through this many hoops just to setup additional “send from” addresses on the iPhone and/or iPad.
Although the current generation of Internet users may not believe it, email has not always been web-based like it is today. Desktop email clients used to be the only method for accessing email. One of the more popular free email clients from back in the day was Mozilla’s Mail and News. After Firefox was spun off of Mozilla, the Mail and News app followed suit and Thunderbird was born. Given the widespread use of web-based email these days, are desktop email clients a dying breed?
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The best web-based email client just got even better, thanks to the wonders of the various innovative features available in Gmail Labs, Google’s testing ground for experimental Gmail features. Once configured, Gmail will display previews of YouTube videos, Picasa and Flickr photographs and Yelp listings directly in an email when using the web-based Gmail interface.
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TechMiso has been trucking along solid for a month now since its launch January 1st, 2009. Along with a modest bump in traffic, we’re seeing solid readership and thoughtful commentary from the folks who have joined us so far.
The foreseeable future promises no let up on tech talk either. With access to mind blowing numbers of news outlets each day, the difficult [but fun] assignment of choosing topics grows exponentially. Here enters RSS-
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They say the first step to realizing you’re addicted to something is to admit you have an addiction. To recognize you may have a problem. So here I am, on this faithful Monday evening, confessing I have a healthy addiction to Google’s online products.
Let me explain.
Waaaaay back in the day, on April 1, 2004, when Google originally published their press release regarding Gmail, announcing the company was testing a preview release of their web-based email product I was ecstatic. The holy grail had arrived – Google, our saviour, to rescue us from the evil web-based email providers has surely devised a far superior product, right?
At the time, I was a long time opponent of web-based email. I despised how Microsoft, Yahoo! and others riddled their products with huge and obnoxious advertisements. Suddenly a new thrill was thrown down my spine at the thought of a new web-based email system which did not append “crap” to every email sent, nor were users disturbed with unwieldy advertising on every page.
It sounded like heaven so I sought out a mission to grab a Gmail account and be part of the “in crowd” at the time. I was lucky, got my account and the rest, as they say, is history. Ever since Gmail was released I have faithfully awaited Google to release new, useful web-based products which can be used to dislodge me from my local workstation and move me to the cloud. Each time Google released a new piece of the cloud puzzle, I was there to jump on top of the offering and adopt it like the fanboy I am.
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