Setting up new mail notification on an iPhone using ONLY the Gmail web app

My iPhone Dock

I made the jump from the iPhone’s included mail application and may swap out the Phone app for a Google Voice web app later, too. The above image is my iPhone dock. Sean McKeever on Facebook asked how I get notifications for new mail being received. Here’s how I do that…

First off, with the iPhone Mail app I never used new mail notification. There’s just too much email every day and having notifications on would turn the phone in to a jumping bean. The little counter of unread messages is nice, of course.

That changes with Gmail and filters. One can receive customized notifications via SMS of new messages based on sender, subject, account, or any other attributes.

  1. Create a filter for a desired message type.
  2. Have the filter results be “Forward it to:” and set your_number@txt.att.net (it’ll cost you a text message if you’re not on an unlimited plan).

This nicely sets up important alerts if you need them. I use these for messages I need to know about immediately… Typically messages sent directly to me and sent from somebody important.

Google Voice – A web app could replace my iPhone dialer (and probably will)

Google Voice iPhone

There’s a lot of noise about Apple rejecting the Google Voice application in the App Store. While a native app would be fantastic, I’d be fine with a good web app. The existing rev is little more than a WAP site and requires three clicks to dial a contact.

It would be incredibly simple to mimic the iPhone’s phone app interface in a web app. It’s just a list of favorites, list of recents, list and search of overall contacts, and voicemail. With HTML5, all of these features from a single web app are simple.

With HTML5 and SQLite the images and local databases can be cached, too. This would allow extremely fast load and minimize any network traffic for initiating a call. I’d probably even swap out the iPhone icon on the home screen for a GV web app shortcut.

Google Voice Migration

I’ve wrapped up my set up and migration to Google Voice. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m linking to Paul Stamatiou’s review. He sums up my impressions, likes, and dislikes perfectly and has good instructions and screenshots, too.

His experience of getting calls intended for prior phone number holders hasn’t been the case for me. And even if undersirable callers are dialing, one can block, screen, and take control so easily that it becomes a non-issue.

My new number is 707-659-6864 (70s-oly-oung).

Stakeholders in eBook Adoption – authors, publishers, distributors, retailers, readers

Mike Shatzkin put up an article yesterday around the various stakeholders (authors, retailers, distributors, and readers) in the ebook industry. It describes the history of the ebook market and his thoughts on coming changes.

In the “vision” stage of ebook adoption, which ended with the launch of the Kindle in November 2007, authors were virtually powerless. With ebook sales even for established books struggling to make triple digits, publishers were gunshy about accepting digitization costs for books other than the biggest sellers and it hardly made sense for authors to make the investment on their own.

Check it out: http://www.idealog.com/blog/aside-from-the-publishers-how-the-other-stakeholders-fare-as-ebook-adoption-continues