Lost Generatoin - AARP Video

So this isn't techy or cutting edge but I feel it is appropriate to share on a blog relating to our generation.  This was a video submitted by a 20yr old for a competition titled "U @ 50" at an AARP meeting.  A friend shared it with me, I enjoyed it and felt it was worth passing on. Blow it up to full screen to read the text. Feel free to share your comments below.

Google Voice - Another piece of your life google now owns

Google voice is a single phone number that will find you anywere. It is tied into your google account and has some pretty neat fetures, including voicemail as email with transcripts, full sms functionality, and the ability to screen calls, among many others.  There are several services that will do this for you now (I use YouMail) but the beauty is that with google, its all free and in one neat and tidy place.  If you poke around on the beta "About" site (Google Voice) they have some quick demo vids of the different features, which are all pretty cool.  The service is still in a closed Beta only available to previous Grand Central users (Where The tech came from, google aquired in 2007) but you leave your email and they will let you know when its available.  

The coolest thing about this in my opinion is the ability to have a single number that can follow you anywhere you already have a phone.  This would be nice for  anyone with multiple phones (cell or home), especially for people who actually use their home phones, as they wont have to run around the house looking for their cell phone if someone wants to get ahold of them. uld alleviate some of my telemarker headaches. A well thoughtout feature is the "Forwarding Phones" that allows you to choose which phone will ring based on who is calling, for instance you can set up your "Friends" to ring every phone, while "work" and "other" may just ring you office or cell phone.  I will take some testing to detemine if I would want this to by my Main number, but does have some pretty neat call screening features that would alleviate some of my telemarkert headaches.

I look forward to playing and sharing my results. 

Here is a teaser of the "Forwarding Phones" Feature:

Microsoft's "Laura" - Your New Virtual Assistant

Engadget posted a link to a Beet.TV interview of a Microsoft employee talking about a new integration of technology called "Laura". She is a virtual assistant that can interpret your speech, movements, clothing, and can handle multiple interactions at once.  I know that I need a personal assistant, and if I can get one that never sleeps it’s even better!  I see the future of this technology allowing you to offload simple tasks, such as finding the cheapest non-stop flight from ORD to LAX on a specific day/time or finding a time for group members to meet (given that they share their calendar with you). This could be incredibly helpful for even personal tasks such as creating a list of 4 and 5 star steak houses within a 10 mile radius, purchasing movie tickets, or finding the weather forecast for your vacation spot. Any task in which the results could be compiled and reviewed later, letting "her" take on the tasks while you do real work.

 

Looking further into the future if businesses had a "Laura" interface in their system, you could have her make dinner reservations, research the availability of products before you went to the store, or even setup your dry cleaning pickup and delivery.  Talk about exchange/outlook on Roids!

 

There are a lot of interesting things that could be done with this and I am excited to see where it goes.

 

Check out the video for a somewhat lackluster demo.