My life...

Gmail Goggles

When I first discovered Gmail Labs, I went a little overboard and enabled every feature they offered without fully exploring them. I was more than a little surprised when I tried to send an email tonight (um, this morning) and encountered a little roadblock... a pop-up with a few little math problems and 60 seconds to solve them if I wanted my email to send!









Ok, now I get it... Mail Goggles - very clever! And effective.  I'm not drunk, just working late and tired and I actually had to use my desktop calculator to solve the problems in 60 seconds. If I were drunk I feel certain I would have given up and gone to bed and written a letter of thanks to the developers in the morning when I woke up to the count down on my Gmail.

And if at first you don't succeed, it just gives you new problems. And some gentle criticism. I may leave it up and see if the comments get progressively worse: "Go to bed you drunk, idiot!"









Now that I'm thinking about it, this would be a great feature to add the the Google Phone for text messages - no more TWI!

read more | digg story

My Opinion on The G1 - An Interview with Manifest Magazine

When Wahyd Vannoni saw my steady stream of Twitter tweets on the G1, he asked if I would write an article for Manifest Magazine. I said I would love to! I never actually found the time to do it, so he interviewed me instead. Fittingly, the interview took place via Google Chat - though I was on my computer, not the phone at the time - I'm not that good...yet!


Google Phone

While the iPhone is now available in several countries, the Google Phone is only available in the US for now.
“Manifest” asked digital marketing strategist Caroline Barry for her opinion on this latest communications device.

Caroline please tell us, what made you chose the GPhone? What was the appeal?

I have wanted an iPhone since they came out, however I am in a contract with T-Mobile. It turns out the GPhone is much better suited for me as I use all of the Google apps that the GPhone uses - Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Docs.

What are your likes and dislikes so far?

I absolutely love all of the add-ons available. My only dislikes would be some of the actual "phone" features. For example switching between calls is difficult and there is no notification if you are on the phone and receive a text that I can tell. Another dislike is that it is highly sensitive, I have "accidentally" called people too many times. I would also like to see the calendar feature enhanced. However, the call quality is excellent, and I have never had a call dropped. The aesthetics of the phone are very pleasing as well.

Do you think it is good value for money?

It’s a very good value if you are able to get it for $179 as I did - I was eligible for the upgrade. However, I have definitely heard some complaints of people having to pay close to $500.

Have you been able to compare your GPhone with a friend's iPhone?

I really have not used an iPhone, but I think the biggest difference would be the keyboard - the GPhone has a full keyboard, complete with numbers so it is very easy to operate. Though I do wish it had the option of not having to pull out the keyboard all the time.

The phone is not symmetrical when the keyboard is extended, so at first it seemed awkward to use - you can see this in a photo of the phone. I thought it would be an issue, but I really don't notice it anymore and have become very proficient at typing on the keyboard.

I think as far as apps go, the GPhone offers a similar selection, possibly some more advanced apps than the iPhone. The GPS is a key selling point, one I was not really aware of, but many of the apps are tied into the GPS. It has Google Maps with street-level viewing, which is amazing! I am not sure if the iPhone offers this.

I have not been terribly impressed with the music feature though, so I do think this is
something that iPhone would be better for. There is only one headphone jack, which is also the same as your charger jack. Also it comes with only a 1 gigabyte card so it does not store much music and I have not had the patience to download much from my iTunes. This is because it doesn't interact with iTunes as an iPhone would, so you have to import directly from your library as far as I can tell, just creating a lot of extra steps - I just haven't spent much time on it yet.

The contacts feature is interesting. The contacts on the GPhone are your GMail contacts. It was a bit of a nightmare at first - taking care of the many multiple entries for each contact. I spent a good deal of time updating all of my contacts online. I had to create a few groups, and then choose which I wanted to have as my phone list. Overall, it is good because now I have the info saved, but a merging feature of some sort would have been nice!

There is no 3G network available where I live, however I have not seemed to notice, the phone is very fast in all applications and I will run multiple programs without it
freezing up. The email notifications actually show up before I get them on my computer!

The touchscreen is very fun to look at and play with! The android market has amazing, free apps that are fun and useful - I love the barcode scanner, jogtracker, and the flashlight! Overall I am very impressed and pleased with this phone. I find it interesting that I have not met anyone else who has one, yet a lot of people recognize
it and ask me about it.

---
Caroline Barry is a self-employed digital marketing strategist specializing in search engine optimization and social networking. She is finally finding time to set-up her own website: www.beawebpreneur.com, which will be available soon.

You can keep in touch with Caroline through her twitterfeeds at www.twitter.com/tweetcaroline

What's a feed? RSS in Plain English

Really Simple Syndication: not really simple to explain. This video from Common Craft does an excellent job.

Twitter in Plain English

An excellent explanation of Twitter from the geniuses at Common Craft.