On October 26 2009 The Goog added a set of helper screens to get your mobile number configured, although they’re buried in settings hell. This is, to the best of my knowledge, how you get it done via the new helpers:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/voice
2. Click “Edit” on an existing mobile number.
3. Click “Show advanced settings”
4. Under “Forwarding Options” click “Activate”
5. Select that mobile number’s carrier and click “Continue.”
6. The steps you need to take with your mobile to configure no-answer/busy forwarding are shown. (Google can’t do this one for you; you need to call it in from from that mobile number.)

No, this is not the same as if you could “port” an existing number to Google Voice.

But that hasn’t been critical for me, as all I want is web/email-accessible voicemail, which my carrier doesn’t provide on my current mobile hardware, and this Google Voice configuration delivers. If that’s all you want, well, here you go.

If you have better steps, please let me know in comments.

I believe they also added cinnamon & nutmeg. Those ingredients made it smell less salty & more like cookies.

For our preschool project today we made our own playdough:

1 cup flour
1 cup warm water
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon oil
1/4 cup salt
food coloring

Mix all ingredients, adding food coloring last. Stir over medium heat until smooth. Remove from pan and knead until blended smooth. Place in plastic bag or airtight container when cooled. Will last for a long time.

Here’s Mekhi making something with his new dough, in orange:

The accident: I type “fedex.com” as “fedex.copm” into the Address bar by mistake, and hit Enter before I even see what I did.

What happened: The search engine which handles the DNS lookup failure (bing.com on my computer) provides a whole navigation layer on top of the “best match” (aka “most clicked”) result (which is fedex.com, obviously) including "Track", but more importantly the input field I was going to look for when I got to FedEx, "Track a package”:

I see this, past in the tracking ID I had, and I’m done. Really slick.

I’ll call out Bing here once again: Bing’s fantastic & you should use it as your default for this reason & others.

Some thoughts:

• Do users really look beyond even the “Best Match” line and see & use these tasks? I do, and it’s a huge timesaver.
• Browsers will eventually (and I think in the case of Google Chrome, are) strip even the search page layer away. (Why not show the Track a package input field as an option when I type the  "fedex.cop…" into the browser’s address bar?) Now, is it better for users that a browser do this, or the functionality stay in the resulting page?
• If browser integration is better for users, what’s the existing or emerging standard for this that all browsers can implement?

Two weekends ago we camped at Bruneau Dunes, which opens its observatory Friday & Saturday evenings after 8:30PM.

Even though the moon was overwhelmingly bright we saw the moons of Jupiter and “The Ring Nebula”  M57.

While M57 doesn’t really look so colorful when seen through Bruneau’s telescope as it does on Wikipedia (right), I saw its light with my own eyes, filtered only by glass, a lot of nothing, & dust.

Standing in line for the big scope isn’t a dream (it’s a bit stuffy & dark in the building, and it took about 20 minutes) and while I was there I overheard:

“If they were smart they’d just put a big TV up on the wall.”

and

“Let’s go, we can look at this online.”

(And they left.)

I respect the work being done to let us view the cosmos through computers & TV (World Wide Telescope, for example), and I realize not everyone has access to such a telescope, but when you do, wait for it. Let the light from these perhaps long-gone places soak straight into your brain through your eyeballs and see what happens. 20 minutes is not too high a price for amazement.

 
Google Fast Flip: Which one of these blocks of text is not like the other?

Utility in Fast Flip’s hero scenario (described here) is not in selecting, but in “flipping”
between news articles, which it does well enough, but with many missing affordances & constraints (like not being able to view the whole article.) Flip needs to be browser functionality, not a web app. Maybe such functions will push into IE or Chrome at some point.

I think of Bing Visual Search as an experiment too, but it puts its filter & decide utility right up front (scenarios described on the Bing blog here.)

   
 Bing Visual Search lets users decide between top apps.

I imagine snapshots of news loaded into Bing Visual Search, and, vice versa, visual searches plugged into Fast Flip. Both would work, but Visual Search would be the sexier decision front end for either, especially if Bing worked with browser tabs (it doesn’t seem to at the moment) and with “DeepZoom” to handle resolution issues.

Speaking of sex, as the US wakes up the the results of the Fast Flip experiment are becoming clear… we click through on skin and scandal, no matter how far away it is:

 
This morning’s “Most Viewed” on Google Fast Flip

The good:

As I alluded, the 2570HD includes an HD TV tuner & remote so it can be used by itself as a 1080p TV. And it’s a computer monitor… says so right on the box… and as such it accepts HDMI or DVI inputs from your PC. The built-in speakers accept RCA & digital input, so it can be used as a replacement for desktop PC speakers.

The partially transparent, double-dark red bezel & transparent neck & clean lines make it one of the nicest looking monitors (when turned off) I’ve seen.

Costco’s & Amazon’s price is too high for a poor monitor, but reasonable for a 25” LCD HD TV.

The bad:

Like many current 23”+ monitors, this one’s 1920 x 1080 pixels. That’s a 16:9 ratio, and well-suited for HD video, but not digital photos, and it feels cramped for web browsing or document editing (all that content’s tall, not wide.) I feel a bit rotten saying this is a “cramped” monitor- it’s double the pixels of screens common only 10 years ago – but 16:10 widescreen ratio at a comparable, or even lesser, number of pixels, is just more comfortable for computing & it works just as well for HD video. (1680 x 1050 from a value perspective, and 1920 x 1200 if you can swing it.)

The ugly:

Even with stand screws fully tightened, the screen wobbles like a hula girl’s skirt. You can’t type anywhere near it without the screen moving.

The backlight is inconsistent, especially near the top. Window titles legible near the middle of the screen are illegible at the top with default Windows 7 settings + any of the monitor’s setting presets. Solid white areas (like web page backgrounds) look curved due to the shading. With settings tweaks things can be improved, but not totally corrected.

Finally, the monitor requires around 8 seconds to wake from sleep, compared to 1 for my current well-aged Apple LCD. After waking the 2570HD presents an on-screen-display (OSD) regarding the resolution for another 2 seconds that covers a quarter of the screen. We can’t turn the OSD off. The same OSD also gets in the way during Windows user account control prompts. A monitor’s supposed to let you work, not get in the way.

We tried super-gluin’ it. Didn’t take. We tried puttin’ the fancy Christmas placemats under the legs, to stop the slip ‘n’ slide action that broke the thing in the first dang place, plus extra glue. Didn’t take. Well, worked for a while, but down at Wal-Mart they’ve got the wreaths out already, so we’ll be needin’ them placemats soon, plus it fell (and can’t get up!) again.

Time to try something else.

Now I can give the missus back her holiday finery.

Yesterday, the blog Mashable says PCs can be pretty good readers:

Although many will argue that the eBook experience is far superior on a device rather than a computer screen — and I would agree — reading books on your laptop or desktop can still be extremely useful. If you’re a student, for instance, it’s much easier to make notes using your computer keyboard rather than a touch screen.

Sure, single-purpose devices work well.

But it seems likely that netbooks that display reader content on an E-Ink screen, and "open" to expose a standard LCD are nigh. That’s good for reading, good for web, and general purpose computing too, and needn’t add much to (not a whole Kindle, for sure) to the price of the PC.

So, I think the software + service is the bigger deal… we’re just waiting the right general-purpose device. This is also where Google (with Google Books software, service, and browsers) & Microsoft (with Reader software and browsers) have landed.

Though I assembled this thought yesterday, today Mashable coincidentally discusses ridiculous, not-at-all-what-I-mean DUAL-LCD laptops:

Two-screen set-ups just allow you to get more done (thus why I use a two-screen set-up). There are disadvantages though, like the power drain two screens will cause and the sheer weight, estimated at 12+ pounds.

Yuck.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii will feature “demo play”. Demo play means the game plays itself through chapters you can’t figure out, showing you each & every move, plopping you near a goal as if you got there all by yourself.

I’ve used a website or guide to unblock my progress in a game, and I realize keeping fun flowing is the intent of demo play – as well as keeping game sales flowing, since freely flowing fun runs out quicker  – but integrating this crutch, especially in a game series like Super Mario Bros. which 6-year olds were able to unravel in the 1980s, is like mandatory plot-explanation subtitles in the movie Ice Age 3.

In the 1980s, when a 6-year old couldn’t figure something out, a 6-year old in the neighborhood  or at school could help. Networking. Teamwork. Conflict negotiation. Trying until you succeed at something. I’m pretty sure these all still work. Get your kids to try these instead of demo-playing right into Idiocracy’s dust bowl.

Why? No, your home computer isn’t as reliable as Facebook or Google’s or Microsoft’s servers… but these services “crash” in ways your home computer can’t:

• Your information’s used in a way you didn’t expect & you want to quit
• Business changes occur you don’t agree with & you want to quit
• Online applications you hoped would stand forever disappear& you’re forced to quit

Keeping your information backed up along the way makes it possible to deal with all these scenarios.

Here’s a way to back up contacts from Facebook into a CSV file (“comma separated values”.) We’re using Windows Live to import contacts from Facebook, then exporting from Windows Live to CSV file. The CSV file is convenient because you can open it in Microsoft Excel or any text editing program. Email applications can often import CSV files as well.

A warning: Using this technique, as far as I know, will send an email to each contact’s address inviting that person to also use Windows Live. This appears to be its cost. This is not stated clearly by Windows Live, so I’m warning you here, and I’m hoping Windows Live clarifies & provides opt-out option in the future. I still think it’s worth doing.

Here are the steps:

1) Sign in or sign up at http://people.live.com.

2) On the main screen at http://people.live.com, click “Add People”

3) Select “Facebook” from pull-down list, then click the big arrow.

4) A window containing a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/login.php…) appears asking for your permission to read contacts from Facebook. Yes,  this is what you came here to do, and if you did these steps, yes, that’s really Facebook, not a malicious site.

5) You may have to repeat step 3 and 4; I’m not sure why.

6) Windows Live itself breaks import into 3 Steps, 2 of which are easy: click “Next” on Step 1 of 3, and “Next” on Step 2 of 3.

7) In Step 3 of 3,  I recommend unchecking “Add these people to Windows Live Messenger” and “Also show these people on my profile page”. These options have benefits, but you can always go back into Windows Live contact list & do these things later once you understand what they mean. Regardless of what you check, this is the step that may “Send Invitation”  emails to your friends. Click “Send Invitation” once everything’s just so:

9) If this isn’t the first time you’ve done this, or you use Windows Live for contact management already, now’s the time to use “Merge” (under “Manage”) to merge any duplicates created by the process back into single contacts. I’ll leave this step up to you; Windows Live makes it easy.

10) Now to export your Windows Live contacts to a CSV file: Click “Export”, under “Manage”:

11) Pass the “are you human?” test:

13) Save the CSV file.

There may be some other technique, but this is what I do. I’d love to hear how you do it.