Photo: marcopako  / Flickr

After a year-long wait, Apple have finally approved the Google Voice app for iPhone, and users have been able to download the application at no charge. The app is able to do everything that Google Voice was capable of before, with one exception: the iPhone version is not able to make internet phone calls.

Before, to use the program for anything other than text messaging and receiving voice mail, one would have to link the phone numbers with Google Voice. Since August, Google have changed all that by adding voice calling to their own email system, Gmail, as a separately installed chat browser for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Call hub

The Google Voice iPhone app remains a control panel rather than a calling program, albeit a highly powerful control panel, allowing you to recommend that your friends, family and contacts to phone your Google Voice number. Google Voice then acts as a hub, where you connect all the numbers in your database and then prioritise them to handle incoming calls more smoothly. These numbers are divided along lines.

The lines in your database can all ring at once, and the handy call screening option can alert you to any unwanted calls. Outgoing calls are treated differently; either by using the Google Voice portal and choosing which line you want the call routed to, or by logging into Gmail and using a headset.

Redesigned

The application has been redesigned, allowing for simple transitions between text messaging and phone options, and includes four main tabs in total: Inbox, Dialler, Contacts and Settings. The dialler contains both texting and calling options within one menu, while notifications will alert you of any incoming messages, found in the inbox.

Lastly, Google Voice handles text messages and voice mail with ease. Text messages are free to send from your end, although your contact on the other side needs to pay whatever their server charges. Voice mails are automatically recorded, transcribed and accessed using the application.

Photo: Amazon

Amazon is supposedly planning on launching its own, competitive Google Android app store, to compete directly with the Google App Marketplace on Google’s own handset platform. Talk about taking it to the enemy right where they sleep.

As yet unclear

Outside of the knowledge that an Amazon app platform is being built, very little is known about the initiative. Most of the info emerging is in relation to developers and how they will be remunerated. They will apparently get paid 70 per cent of purchase price, with an unusual 20 per cent of list price being mentioned, too.

Furthermore Amazon is developing its own layer of DRM that will be unique to their store, bringing the bane of PC gamers everywhere to even more smartphones wherever you may be.

How this is a coup for users and developers

The big thing here for users and current paid app Android developers is the reality that Amazon processes payments from more countries than Google Checkout currently does. This means for those who’ve been unable to purchase official apps through Google’s payments platform, Amazon would assuage your pain real soon.

How this relates to the app store

Depending on who you ask, this Google Android app store fragmentation is superior or inferior to Apple’s centralised model. Defenders of Apple’s model speak of the improved ease of finding what you’re looking for, since everything is in one place.

Detractors of the Apple model – and thus, supporters of the Google Android multiple markets model – point out Apple’s draconian control of the store as a negative. Many key apps – potentially game changing apps – like the Google Voice issue of old, and wi-fi network sharing apps and the like, do not get approved because Apple wants too much control.

Choice: the only promise

Even though it hasn’t officially been confirmed that this Amazon app platform is being prepared, there’s good reason to believe that the company is, in fact, building a competing Google Android Marketplace. If you are a supporter of the supposed Google Android openness and the ‘choice’ it gives you, this should excite you somewhat. Hopefully it will mean a greater influx of high quality apps to play on that newly minted Samsung Galaxy S, HTC handset, or the many brilliant phones Sony Ericsson is working on.

Photo: Cisco

Well, well, well! VoIP giant Skype recently announced its intentions to file for an IPO, but it looks like that may no longer be happening. Networking giant Cisco is apparently sniffing around the VoIP company, and if it wants to take the plunge, it’s going to cost them a pretty penny!

Lots of monies

If this Cisco Skype acquisition gets pushed through, it will likely cost the company $5 billion (£3.25 billion) and up. Big monies. More than that, it would put Cisco, whose legacy business is in routing, networking and switch manufacturing, in the services industry. The problem here for the company, if these Cisco Skype rumours are true, is that through Skype it would be in direct competition with many of its present day clients, like telecommunications firms and cable firms. But, at the same time, Cisco cannot afford to become a dinosaur, and needs to be proactive if it is to protect its core business.

Guess who else wanted some – Google

Reports also suggest that Google was interested in acquiring Skype but wisely chose to back down due to concerns about anti-trust regulations. Google has its own VoIP service through Google Voice, classic Gmail voice and video chat, and the newly released service that lets you make phone calls through Gmail. In short, the company Google knows regulators wouldn’t let it pass.

VoIP services a looming battlefield

Photo: Skype

We’ve long argued that VoIP services is where things are headed and, if not today, will someday soon erode the core businesses of telephony companies. This, however, makes you wonder whether a terrestrial landline or mobile carrier shouldn’t be sniffing around Skype itself. This would give them an exit out of their dangerously precarious business into the hotbed that is VoIP services, and though it would cannibalise its core business, it could be considered planning for the future.
With over 560 million users up for grabs, the Cisco Skype acquisition could be colossal because it puts a company clearly poised for future dominance under the care of potentially the most gifted engineering talent in the world.

What do you make of this, and do you think Cisco will push through for the VoIP services provider?

Photo: Google

Oh snap! The millions of us who use Gmail everyday logged in and saw a very peculiar and unexpected notification – you can now make VoIP calls right out of the mail client. That’s Google’s way of saying ‘What’s good, Skype? What’s really good?’

How it works

Basically, when logged into Gmail with the classic view, where your Gtalk icons are, you will see a green phone icon. Pressing that button brings up a keypad on the bottom right of your screen – where your Gtalk conversation would default to if that. Now dial the number you’re trying to contact right out of the window. It can be a landline or mobile number – Google is non-descriminatory – and it will connect through its Google Voice protocol to the person you’re trying to contact, wherever in the world they may be.

Super cheap

Calls to the US and Canada within Google Voice for Gmail are free. Calls to regions like the UK, China, Europe and Japan will be as low as 2 cents for each minute of talktime, according to the folks at Google. Google was smart enough to give every user $0.10 of credit to test the service out, and like all responsible users the first person I called was, well, myself. Verdict? It works pretty well.

Google Voice a big deal

Photo: Stock.Xchng

This move to integrate Google Voice into Gmail is just one piece in a puzzle Google is slowly beginning to flesh out with its phoning system. TechCrunch had a report on how Google Voice payphones would begin sprouting up in US universities and airports, while others noted the push for Google Voice on the iPhone continues, regardless of Apple’s obvious resistance.

And though Google VoIP seemed a mere hobby for the company, it’s clear with this move that Gmail has Skype squarely in its sights.

A sign of the future

Google VoIP, Skype, and VoIP handset manufacturers all point to a future that can no longer be ignored – the day when Internet protocol-based calls circumventing the traditional networks are our default way of calling one another. Google Voice and Google VoIP are here to stay and Gmail is the gateway drug to get us all hooked on the service.