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The Google Voice service has been one of the most anticipated Google services of all time, only second to the launch of Gmail. They have only been allowing users who have received an invite to take part in this beta and it filled up very fast! The Google Voice service allows people to use a myriad of very cool and useful phone services. You can forward phone calls to different phone numbers based on the caller id or the name of the caller. Another great feature offered by this service is the ability to receive your voice mail in your email.  Google’s servers will actually translate voice into text for you.  There are many other great features being offered and for now at least they are all free to use, except calling overseas.

There is no more waiting for an initiation, now you can simply go signup at the site : http://voice.google.com You can choose to get a new phone number to tie to your account or you can use an existing mobile number for your service. Both have their advantages, so choose wisely!

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The newest jailbreak news is from the United States Government. There have been thousands upon thousands of iPhone owners who have jailbroken their phones and up until now it has been a very touchy subject, both legally and morally. The jailbreak iPhone apps have given Apple phone users the ability to install any application they wanted and add functionality to their iPhone that was not allowed by standard iTunes apps.  The Jailbreak is the ultimate in software freedom for any iPhone fan.  Taking the features and functionality to the next level was the concept that has driven the Cydia and Rock app developers for years and Apple has never been comfortable with these new options and possible loss in their own sales due to these competitors.

Apple Locks Down iPhone Jailbreaking and Kills iTunes Accounts

Since iTunes 9.2 and the iOS 4 Apple has required users to agree to a EULA that stated that Apple had the right to snoop your iPhone or iPod Touch to see if you were using nonstandard software.  If you were using Jailbroken apps and features it was being reported by many users that they were getting suspended from iTunes and sometime even from their carrier.  Well, I am here to tell you that this is thing of the past.  You no longer have to worry about getting caught using the software you want.  No longer is it legal for Apple to punish users for using third party software on iPhones or performing the common hack that is referred to as “Jailbreaking” your iPhone.

US Government Gives Consumers iPhone Freedom

The government has passed legislation that makes it totally legal to jailbreak your iPhone.  You don’t have to worry about getting hassled from Apple or your cell phone carrier when you perform this any more.  It has been decided that jail-breaking your iPhone is not only legal, but does not break any user agreement that Apple has stood behind in the past.

Apple’s Official ResponseTo Legal Jailbreaking

Just like in any situation Apple always has a reply even when they really should not. This situation is no different than the others, except this time they kept Steve Jobs out of the mix.  This quote below is from apples official spokesperson, unfortunately there was no crazy email from Mr. Jobs on this one.

Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.

It would seem that Apple is trying to hold their ground even when there is nothing to hold onto in this case.  The simple fact is that you can do what you want with hardware you purchased according to the US government no matter if it is an iPhone or any other cell phone or device.    So have fun and what are you waiting for, lets jailbreak em all!

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Google is a company that millions love and most people have a very high level of confidence in. Most people overlook the fact that much like Microsoft and other huge companies, they to have bought out and squashed more than one competitor in their time, because they keep dangling something shiny in front of us to keep us distracted.  After all free stuff sure makes people forget about a lot of not so sound choices they may have made in the past and Google definitely provides plenty of free stuff for us.

So many are already aware of the new and very cool “free” service Google has started called Google Voice.   This was a great idea and many people are using this service to it’s fullest by taking advantage of the totally free phone number they give you, the customized answering service that can be used from the internet or email, call filtering to only redirect calls you want and much more.  All in all the Google Voice service is simply amazing and a great value even if they were charging for it. The ability to take your voice messages in your email after they have been magically translated into text for you should be a service on it’s own, but it is just one part of this great package Google is offering for free.

I was doing some research on free calling from the internet and was surprised to find how many services still offer totally free calling from your PC.  However, in my journey I ran across this post on 100% free voip phone service using Google Voice and Gizmo which really got me exited about using the free “Skype” like app called Gizmo and the free phone number from Google paired together to make a totally free functional intnernet phone.  However, once I tried to access the Gizmo website, I realized it was down.  So back to the search engine and I soon found this link on Google’s own website http://www.google.com/gizmo5/

So it looks like Google has already acquired this company and is planning on integrating it with their Google voice service. Once this takes place it will cost to make outgoing calls, pretty much like the service that Skype is offering. With heavy competition from companies like Vonage and my personal favorite Magic Jack, it will be interesting to see how Google fits into the new age of VOIP and how long before the telephone companies that we now know are gone altogether. You can read more about this on the Google Voice Blog here.

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It took a while, but now that the small mini laptops that we now refer to as “Netbooks” have finally become hugely popular, mostly due to their price reduction, we all want better and faster mini notebook PC’s.  The manufacturers have responded to the high level of demand for better quality Netbooks and are getting ready to start kicking out new lines of Netbooks with Duel Core Processors.  This is only a natural transition as micro-computing or mobile-computing become more of a common place practice in the daily lives of so many people world wide.

Netbook’s Need More Power

The Netbooks that are currently available are very capable of running either a Linux or Windows OS, basic productivity software and of course your web browser of choice.  However, we all want more.  What about games, high end image apps and of course better video without lag?  These are just some of the problems that the old single core processors were simple not capable of keeping up with and the new processors should excel at. Dictated by the size of hte hardware used to make these miniature laptops they will most likely always be a step behind their bigger brothers, but for now this will be a much appreciated and much needed leap in the right direction for those who love the compact size and portability of these tiny devices.

Netbook Deals

Since the new wave of netbooks is coming, expect to see close out prices on many different Netbook models in stores and online. The local Best Buy is even clearing their current inventory out to make room for the next generation of Netbooks, so you may check local big box retail stores or online deals sites for their netbook deals while this years stock is still around.  Once the new duel core netbooks make it to market, expect to see a higher price tag, but it should be well worth the boost in speed and performance.

Thanks Intel

Of course the chipset maker “Intel” is who is behind the new chipset that will be used on these next gen Netbooks and we wanted to say thanks.  The new Intel Atom Dual Core N330 Processor 1.6GHz is already being shipped in some Asus Netbooks. It will only be a few weeks before you can expect to see all the other companies starting to include these new faster processors.  The next generation of these cool little laptops will prove to be stronger and faster than ever before and may continue to kill full size laptop sales as they will still be cheaper than their full sized counterparts.

Here are the tech specs for one of these new duel core chips from Intel:

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The Google image search has to be one of the most popular image search tools on the planet.  Pulling images from almost ever site that it has indexed even huge photo sites like Flickr and PhotoBucket make it to listings here, this makes it possibly one of the strongest tools ever created to find online images of pretty much anything that could come to mind, both good and bad, some argue. Regardless, there are other image searches that many people think are dominant in layout and usability, well Google does not like to be 2nd bet at anything so they have changed up their image search display to see what the consumer thinks now!

It looks to be a very fast loading setup that offers a image only page display until you have hovered over an image.  Once you click on an image, you are taken to the website where the image originated, much like before, but now the image is shown big and ready to view in a clean looking ajax shadow box effect over the website instead of being at the top of the page and small.  This really makes it easy for webmasters who are searching for graphics that have been “labeled for reuse” because it cuts one step out of the image download process, cool.

They will surely be tweaking this and making some other small changes. We all know that once they start changing something, they just can’t stop right?  Well, it is looking good so far if you ask me and I can’t wait to see what they are going to do next.  Just wanted to take a quick second to let everybody know that the world’s best image search, just got better.

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If you are an online deal hunter then you are most likely familiar with the Woot! website.  For those of you who have never heard of this website before, it is a very popular deal of the day site that share hot deals and each day offers there famous “one day sale” that usually has some cool gadget or gizmo for an unbelievable price.  Many deal hunters have this site bookmarked and check up on it regularly.

Amazon has noticed it’s growing popularity and has decided to buy them out.  It sounds like there will be very few if any changes to the existing site.  The only thing that we believe will change is the one off deals, will now be provided by Amazon.com.  This is not a surprise as the huge e-commerce machine known as Amazon has already explored the daily deal marketing method with their own Daily GoldBox Deal section on their main site and now has found another outlet to further monopolize on consumers interest in online savings.

To learn more about the transition to take place and hear what the guys at Woot! have to say here is a great article found on the official Woot site: Amazon, Woot and You

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The battle is over for those iPhone owners who want to use the power of Adobe Flash enabled websites on their iPhone’s.  There have been applications that were available on the Apple App Store in the past that used java to process the flash and output the same information in a format that was the iPhone was able to understand, but Apple has taken these apps down for whatever reason.  Now there is a new option that takes a different method to make flash available to iPhone users.

The app is called Cloud Browse, so go download it now if you want to watch flash videos and more on your own iPhone.  The app is totally free at this point, but will most likely turn into a paid application soon enough.  Through the use of a VPN type connection Cloud Browse allows you a remote connection to a Firefox web browser that allows you to do anything you would normally be able to do using the Firefox browser including using the browser to display flash output on your Apple iPhone.

This is the first application to successfully make flash work without totally slowing down the application it was using.  The older java apps were slow as snot and were almost useless.  The Cloud Browse application has a lot of promise and we hope that Apple allows it to remain on the App Store.

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Ever since the iPhone 4 news was made public by Steve Jobs everybody has been scrambling.  You will see a lot of big companies making special deals and opening their doors to anybody who wants to do business with them to be part of the iPhone 4 roll out.  Of course the iPhone 4 launch date has come and passed, but not without some very crazy instances and as Apple always seems to like it, all sorts of smoke and mirrors.  The launch date was pushed back in most places as the initial shipments were not not shipped at all because of the massive amount of pre-orders that Apple had to attempt to fulfill.

Radio Shack has one of the most interesting deals out there right now. They will buy your old iPhone from you.  They are promising to pay at least $100 iPhone 3G models and $200 for iPhone 3GS models that do not have water damage or cracked screens.  The price may be much more depending on the condition of your phone and your account history with AT&T, but this is one promotion that you will not find anywhere else.

You can validate this offer by seeing this official tweet on the Radio Shack Twitter page : http://twitter.com/RadioShack/status/16308172763

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