Voice Actions are a series of spoken commands that let you control your phone using your voice. Call businesses and contacts, send texts and email, listen to music, browse the web, and complete common tasks, all just by speaking into your phone.

Send text messages

Say “send text to [recipient] [message]*”
e.g. “send text to PhotoJulia Running late. I will be home around 6:37″

Listen to music

Say “listen to [artist/song/album]”
e.g. “listen to Styx”

Get directions

Say “navigate to [address/city/business name]”
e.g. “navigate to the The Roy Rogers, Dale Evans Museum” or “navigate to 15650 Seneca Road”

Call businesses

Say “call [business name] [location]*”
e.g. “call Sanfilippo’s Pizza Le Mesa”

Call contacts

Say “call [contact name] [phone type]*”
e.g. “call Raymond J. Johnson Jr. home”

Send email

Say “send email to [recipient] [subject]* [body]*”
e.g. “send email to Adonis How’s life in Canada treating you? The weather’s beautiful here!”

View a map

Say “map of [address/city]”
e.g. “map of San Diego”

Go to websites

Say “go to [website]
e.g. “go to archshrk”

Write a note

Say “note to self [message]”
e.g. “note to self grocery list banana milk eggs pizza”

Search Google

Say “[your query]”
e.g. “pictures of Corbin Beard”

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Tell me about it, big boy

First, I am happy to report that I was among the first to get the official update for the Droid phone. Many people, like me, have patiently waiting for the official OTA upgrade (instead of downloading the unofficial version and roting rooting my phone) and to have to wait while others were upgrading would be quite frustrating. It’s like being at the back of the line at Yogurt Mill on a hot summer day.

Now on to the features I so looked forward too.

Exchange support had no effect on me but I had set up my work email and calendar to sync with my phone (just in case). The first thing I noticed was that my office calender and my Google calender merged into one calender. Useful, yes – but I suspect there are a lot of people who would like to keep them separate. I’m sure this can be done but I think it’s odd that it did it automatically.

Home Screen improvements are nice. I like having the ‘phone’ and ‘web’ buttons on all 5 screens plus the navigation between windows is better with the addition of ‘page dots’. So you can slide from one screen to anther or tap the lower corners to move between screens. Also, the apps screen is a lot better looking. The pitch black background seems to make things look cleaner and sharper in contrast to the dark gray background from the previous version.

Camera and Gallery changes are nice. Having the camera options right there on the screen means I’m more likely to make on the fly changes but I most likely will stick with auto settings. Still an improvement, though.

Portable hotspot and USB tethering was the biggest disappointment. Verizon says that the Droid simply doesn’t have the hardware capability to support the WiFi hotspot feature. While this may be true technically, people have been able to do this already with apps like PDAnet – but this method requires software be installed on your computer, which may be the difference. And USB tethering appears to be an extra service you have to pay for. This is NOT cool. I’m sure this will be changed pretty soon as the uproar is likely to be quite loud.

Improved performance is noticeable but somethings took a while to load the first time. I chalk this up to internal syncing/caching. I haven’t really tested this out or don’t proper comparative speed analyses but I’m sure it will become more evident the more I use it. Of course, I’ll quickly get used to the speed and begin to find it too slow before too long.

Flash 10.1 support is not automatic. Apparently, the Flash 10.1 support is part of another upgrade.

Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 for Android 2.2 has been released to partners.

The upgrade path for your phone depends on the specific device, manufacturer, operator and the region you are in. If your device has already received Android 2.2, Adobe Flash Player will be coming soon.

I’m sure there’s other features I haven’t tapped into yet (and I may never) but as I find them, I’ll let you know about it.

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Exchange support
To be honest, this one has little to no affect for me just yet as my office is a little behind on the upgrade path. We just upgraded from 2000 to 2007 and are moving our email to “the cloud”. I can already sync my office email and calendar with my phone, which may or may not be a good thing. The big plus is that I’m able to check which days we have a Lunch-and-Learn so I don’t have to pack a lunch. Exchange Support itself is more for those corporate big wigs who need a lot more integration (I guess)

Home Screen
The Phone, applications Launcher, and Browser now have dedicated shortcuts on the Home screen, making it easy to access them from any of the home screen panels which went from 3 screens to 5. This is a big plus as these three items are probably the most accessed and shouldn’t be confined to one screen, especially now that you have five screens to place shortcuts and widgets.

Camera and Gallery
Since I haven’t seen this one in person (or in video) I will have to rely on the propaganda regarding the camera/video enhancements until i have a chance to play with it myself. One change, is Gallery now allows you to peek into picture stacks using a zoom gesture which is nice, but only if it’s faster. The new on-screen camera buttons provide easy access to a new UI for controling zoom, flash, white balance, geo-tagging, focus and exposure from the camera while, the Camcorder provides an easy way to set video size/quality for MMS and YouTube. I also hear you can use the LED flash as a camcorder light but I doubt that will have much practical application as the flash is only so strong.

Portable hotspot
This is probably one of the coolest new features and one everybody is likely to find useful. Certain devices like the Motorola Droid can be turned into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot that can be shared with up to 8 devices. And all Android-powered phones can be used as a 3G connection for a Windows or Linux laptop by connecting the phone to the computer with a USB cable. Think of it as a personal, portable modem. While the speed may not be lightning fast (like at home) it sure beats waiting to get home before connecting to the internet.

Improved performance
This improvement is bound to be a boost to everyone regardless of the other features you use, after all – performance is performance and nobody uses a smart phone just to make calls – especially Apple iPhone4 users (hehe). I won’t get into the technical aspects of the performance boost (because I don’t understand them) but needless to say, it will be a welcomed upgrade as load times can never be fast enough.

Performance of the browser has been enhanced using the V8 engine, which enables faster loading of JavaScript-heavy pages.

Dalvik Performance Boost: 2x-5x performance speedup for CPU-heavy code over Android 2.1 with Dalvik JIT.

Kernel Memory Management Boost: Improved memory reclaim by up to 20x, which results in faster app switching and smoother performance on memory-constrained devices.

Flash 10.1 supported
This is one of the most sought after changes for the Android platform as Flash is used on virtually every major site anyone, anywhere has reason to visit. From videos to games to image galleries and everything in between. Now many will tell you that Flash is on the way out (much the same way as the dinosaurs) but even if nobody used Flash to create anything new again, there is far too much Flash content already out there to ignore.

So while I finish upgrading my phone and play with all the new features, check out this Android 2.2 Official Video from Google. I’ll let you know all about it when I come back.

Benefits of System Update
Benefits of downloading and installing the new software enhancements.
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What is AmazonWireless?
AmazonWireless (http://www.amazonwireless.com) is a new website by Amazon.com that offers cell phones and wireless plans, easy shopping without rebate hassles, and FREE two-day shipping.

AmazonWireless makes it easy for customers to upgrade their phone if they already have a plan, or if they want to establish new cell phone service, has tried to make it simple to find the right phone, service plan, and options.

Customers can shop for phones by carrier, phone feature, price, color, and brand. The site’s shopping cart will guide them through each stage of the purchase process, where they’ll find familiar Amazon features like bestseller lists, detailed product descriptions, and customer reviews.

AmazonWireless is owned and operated by Amazon.com. Customers can shop securely with their Amazon.com account on AmazonWireless, and benefit from Amazon’s world-class service and security.

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AmazonWireless

Another feature of Google Voice is custom messages. Basically, I can have a unique outgoing message for each my contacts. So I can have a loving message for my wife, funny ones for my friends and professional ones for my clients.

Now if you’re looking for a good outgoing message, check this out…
tyler

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Your attempts have failed

I just installed (over the air) the latest OS for my Motorola Droid phone and so far it seems fine. That is, I haven’t done anything except replace my gallery widget and added the Google weather/news widget (which may replace my Weatherbug app.

With Android 2.1, Motorola Droid users will get multitouch pinch-to-zoom capabilities (using the built-in browser), the Gallery feature (for viewing images), and a Google Maps app. The Gallery app also brings the 3D layout found on the Nexus One, and — surprise, surprise — live wallpapers, which were previously missing from the upgrade reports. – PCWorld

Enhancements:
• Pinch-to-zoom is now available when using the browser, Gallery, and Google Maps.™
• New Weather and News application plus widget.
• The Weather and News app pulls the information you want from the Web and brings it to your fingertips. You get weekly and hourly weather forecasts based on your location, and news headlines.
• New support for voice-to-text entry.
• Whenever a text-entry box appears, simply tap the microphone icon on the virtual keyboard and speak.
• New Gallery application with 3D layout. View and share photos taken with your phone and images from your online Picasa Web albums.
• Live Wallpapers offer richer animated, interactive backgrounds on the home screen. Access them with a long press anywhere on the home screen. Tap Wallpapers, then Live Wallpapers.

Improvements:
• Free Yahoo!® Mail is now supported—simply sign in with your Yahoo! email address and password.
• Google Maps update.
• Personalized suggestions and synchronized starring with desktop maps.google.com.
• Starred items are stored and synced automatically between Google Maps on your device and maps.google.com on your computer, making it easy to search for places you’ve searched for before.
• New night mode in Google Maps Navigation automatically changes the screen at night for easier viewing.
• Improved pattern-lock functionality.
• Improved handset audio when disconnecting a wired headset.
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Droid 2.1

First, get a Google Number. There’s more features this way and you can always start giving it out as your number or keep it secret for special people to use (your mom, the baby sitter, the guy who interviewed you for that dream job…)

Second, pick a good number. When you get a Google number you have some control over what number they assign to you. First, pick your area code. Simple enough unless your one of the many Americans who live in a multi-area code zone (like me). From there, you can search for certain character combinations that may be available. Anything good is likely already taken so consider something easy for you. If your number is 123-555-4321 then try and get something in your area code with 4321 also. That way, you only need to remember three new digits. or try getting your number for a different area code.

Once you’re done, you can use this number to send and receive sms messages (sorry, no media messages yet). Just make sure you don’t have it send you a text message to your cell phone if you have a smart phone and use the Google Voice app. If you do, then you’ll get two notices every time you get a message.

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This is a free service which is good, because if I was paying for this service, I’d be really disappointed. But since it’s free and isn’t any worse than my carrier’s voice mail system (aside from the delay) I’ll keep using it. You see, while it’s pretty good at transcribing the messages I get, it only gets about 70% of the message right. That’s enough to get the gist of the message prior to listening to it but not enough to rely on it for detailed information. Case in point, below are a couple of messages I received this weekend. One from my wife, and the other from a good friend of mine.

Hey love, it’s mike another year now and we’re walking up for the front gate, so just want to let you know. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet you there. Man will see you soon. Thanks. Bye.

Hey Babe, It’s just me. I, I just left starting it and I just wanted to see Al Gore invented the thing. Hopefully you were able to concentrate and he was the as well for you so love you. I’m heading over to the party now. Love you bye.

The italics represent the words that Google Voice wasn’t sure about. It uses various shades of grey text to represent it’s confidence in accuracy But as you can tell from the actual messages, even that isn’t completely reliable.

My Friend My-Friend

My Wife My-Wife

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Talk dirty to me

For the gamers who frequent my site (especially when at school) I must apologize for the down time earlier today. My wife emailed me to let me know there were some problems with our sites and that I had an email from the hosting company I should read. Here’s what it said:

Recently we have noticed that your web site(s) is consuming a
disproportionate amount of server resources (including memory and/or CPU
time). Because of this, we have had to move your account off of the
shared hosting server to an auxiliary server. We now request that you
consider purchasing a Managed or other Dedicated Server in order to
continue hosting with 1&1 Internet.

The decision to move your account was made by the system administrators
in order to improve the quality of service for the rest of our clients
on the shared server from which you were previously hosted. The
resources consumed by your account threatened the ability of that server
to capably operate as as a shared host, so it was required that your
account be moved in order to mitigate server load. Though we could move
your site back to the original shared hosting server, it is not
recommended. Your account activity has demonstrated that your site
deserves its own server to better suit its performance needs.

Please visit 1and1.com to review the server products we offer. You will
have one (1) month to make a decision and migrate your account over to a
1&1 server or another host provider. You can choose to return your
account back to the shared server, provided that you take steps to
reduce the load generated by your websites. If the account has to be
moved off the shared server system again you will only have the option
of purchasing a dedicated server account to continue hosting with 1&1
Internet.

Please reply to this email promptly. Further questions/comments should
be directed to abuse-team email.

Thank you for your compliance in this matter.

Apparently, the new archive plugin I installed was using over 20% of the resources on the shared server- the entire server. To put it in perspective, shared servers like the one I use can host 1,000 websites or more. That’s entire websites, not just pages.

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Did I do that?

One of the features of the Motorola Droid (and other Google phones I guess) is that you can use your Gmail contacts as your phone contacts. I talked about importing my old phone contacts before but one of the results was a plethora of duplicate contacts and overlapping contacts.

For instance, I usually had one phone contact for couples and used the pink phone icon for the wife and the blue phone icon for the husband. This made it easy to search and since my old phone had a 99 contact limit, I saved room for more contacts.

Of course, when merged with my Gmail contacts, there’s a lot of editing involved but nothing too difficult. That is, until I discover how many phone numbers I have for certain people. There are even cases where I have an entry for Bob and Carol Smith as well as Carol and Bob Smith – but there are different numbers between them.

That’s why this past Sunday, I spent several hours combing through my Gmail reviewing every contact I have for accuracy and repetition. What I discovered was that Gmail remembers too many contacts.

As it turns out, if you send or receive someone an email , Gmail seems to keep them as a contact, even if it was only once. I had several contacts from craigslist postings and customer support emails. And while those are easy enough to identify for removable, the other contacts typically had names or appeared worth keeping.

The real difficulty for me is that my wife and I share our Gmail account so many of those contacts could be people she knows and wants to keep. In fact, we use our one Gmail account to handle several different email addresses from personal accounts to the websites I manage. Thus we had over 900 contacts to sort through. I can only imagine what those power users have to deal with.

I haven’t finished sorting through the list but I did make great progress. Soon I’ll start asking people for more info like birthdays, street address, webpages, etc so my contact list is more complete and easier to maintain. But for now, I have 791 contacts still to go. Check that, 789.Similar Posts:

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Keeping up with…everyone