61–70 of 87 posts
Ugh, I hate that SMS is conflated with Hangouts as it is. It causes notifications for work-related chat to get mixed in with notifications for personal text messages on my phone. Can anyone suggest alternative SMS clients for Android?
They also removed the last bit of Jabber interoperability in the new Google Mail chat/hangouts frontend. I used to be able to talk to my Jabber frieds on both Android and Gmail/Web. They dropped federation on Android with the move to Hangouts, and -- unsurprisingly -- they're now doing the same for Gmail/Web as it's moving to Hangouts. I'm eyeing TextSecure as a replacement IM tool. Sort of hoping the TextSecure desk…
Moving? Hasn't this been the case for the last two years?
They also removed the last bit of Jabber interoperability in the new Google Mail chat/hangouts frontend. I used to be able to talk to my Jabber frieds on both Android and Gmail/Web. They dropped federation on Android with the move to Hangouts, and -- unsurprisingly -- they're now doing the same for Gmail/Web as it's moving to Hangouts. I'm eyeing TextSecure as a replacement IM tool. Sort of hoping the TextSecure desk…
Aaand no federation with TextSecure either.. :/
I gotta say, while I can't really fault them for not releasing the software as quickly as I'd wish they did, I do think their communication could be a bit better. I still have no idea how, for instance, the CM integration works on either the user interface or the technical level. The inter-operability may be transparent; it certainly is oblique. ;)
Don't get me wrong, though, I like what they're doing and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
They also removed the last bit of Jabber interoperability in the new Google Mail chat/hangouts frontend. I used to be able to talk to my Jabber frieds on both Android and Gmail/Web. They dropped federation on Android with the move to Hangouts, and -- unsurprisingly -- they're now doing the same for Gmail/Web as it's moving to Hangouts. I'm eyeing TextSecure as a replacement IM tool. Sort of hoping the TextSecure desk…
> they're now doing the same for Gmail/Web as it's moving to Hangouts. Moving? Hasn't this been the case for the last two years?
It's still opt-in, at least for me.
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I find Voice to be incredibly useful when wanting to conduct business with someone once and then have no connection to them again. Such as Craigslist. Every time I list, it is a disposable number.
http://burnerapp.com/ It is a paid service, vs Voice which is free, but you may prefer the paid service depending on how badly the Hangouts integration goes.
Up until about 2010 or so, they were absolutely legendary for their skillful execution of ideas - just the right interface, feature-set, and balance. Time and time again, everything they did they knocked out of the park.
And then, something changed.
Now they are changing what they did right by taking the dumbest moves over and over again - the ones that completely destroys their credibility and alienates their userbase.
Is there a single user anywhere who wants this? I really don't get it.
If google did a survey:
"Are you happy with google voice or would you rather have it in our wacky skype knockoff that you use with our goofy facebook clone?"
I'm trying to think of what it would look like if other companies decided to do a similar thing. It would be like if say, General Mills came out with a terrible wretched artificial sweetener and then decide to put it in every product they sell because well, it's their sweetener - of course they should completely dismantle all of their successful lines in the name of their incredibly unsuccessful one. Duh!
I really hope that they find the John-Scully's who are internally making all these retarded decisions and stop doing what they say - or else they're well on their way to being a has-been. Yet another great company that somehow put a bunch of ivy-league fortune-500 trainwreck-types in charge and then trusted them until it was too late.
In 1999 my friend called Google The next altavista. At this rate, he may be right.
Well, this kind of sucks. I use a Google Voice number that is associated with a Gmail account that I do not use for any other purpose (Hangouts/Talk or otherwise). It doesn't even have a Google+ account associated with it. It's nice to have single number that can ring all my lines. If/when this is killed, what's the alternative? (Article appears to be down/inaccessible for me).
I'm finding voip.ms to be pretty good, no major issues in over a year of using them. It's a power user tool, so it's not quite as slick as Voice was. I ported my old Voice number to voip.ms too.
I also have a Google Voice account, but the service is less reliable than Voip.ms, and I only use it to call a couple of family members who use Google Voice as their primary phone service.
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Which AT&T plan are you using? I'm about to write up an article about going data-only and could use some more reference plans besides T-Mobile's.
I am actually in Canada, so I use Bell (This is the plan: http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/iPad_data_plans... ). I guess it's actually usually around $20 (sometimes I don't go over the 10MB plan if I am on Wifi lots). This is the best I could find for something in Canada. Let me see that article when you are done! If I move to the US I'll be looking to try the same thing there. Edit: I am looking at Bolt.…
And I agree about phone numbers. They should just be the IP addresses of communication. But nobody's developed a good-enough DNS equivalent (yet). We still all rely on a local cache of numbers in our phones' address books.
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I don't understand why you'd roll all of your products into something that has a terrible user experience. I'm a long-time Google/Android user, and its just painful using Hangouts. I disabled it and switched to Telegram.
A number of security professionals have expressed serious concern about Telegram, including Moxie Marlinspike [0] [1] and Geoffroy Couprie [2]. It's really painful to see Telegram gaining popularity, when it has such glaring errors. You should instead use OTR on Jabber (ChatSecure [3]), or TextSecure [4] (which now has an Internet delivery mechanism). [0]: http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/ [1]:…
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... which will then require you to log in with a Google Plus-upgraded account. I have two Gmail accounts, and can't use the hangouts feature on one of them (in the browser or through their client) without enabling Plus.
Google's login system is horribly broken. They seem to have to reinvent a method for handling the multi account scenario in every product. The resistance to adding G+ to accounts seems Sisphyean. Larry Page clearly envisions a common integrate identity systems across the product tree and I don't think anyone is going to stop him.
The problem is that they wanted to brand this move as "hey g+ify your account".
It probably has something to do with the change in terms and conditions. I guess they could have forced everybody to this new terms and conditions (or leave) but instead they let people choose to use google products with the old terms and conditions by letting users to actively opt in to g+ (ehm, some might say "tricked", but that's another story).
What I wanted to say is that usually people look at this whole thing as an evil move, but hey all the companies around amend their terms and conditions and usually don't let you a choice about whether you want to be part of a new incarnation of the service, or not yet.
Note: I'm not talking in favour or against the actual terms and conditions (e.g. the real name policy), this is an orthogonal issue. I have the feeling that in the end it all boils down to this.
Anyway, this is so confusing. The fact that we are still talking about all this crap means that the was a failure in communication.
I wish there was a way to switch to this new identity system, and then disable G+ for your account. This would make so many people happy and probably it won't reduce the number of new G+ users by much.