Here are the before and after pictures.

Before

After

Yep. I am using Google Voice as a hub for phone communications. My Google Voice number will be a primary number for people to contact me. Depending on the person calling, Google Voice will forward to my iPhone, my home phone, my spouse’s mobile phone or any combination of the three. (With Google Voice, you can actually get so granular that you can forward to different numbers based on the person calling, have a different greeting for any person, and a different voicemail message for any person or group of people). And I can add or remove phones from the forwarding mechanism at my leisure because my Google Voice number will shield anyone who calls from the black box that is now my web of communication facilities.

Sure people will still call my iPhone directly. And I expect some people to do that as it is my primary line for business discussions, etc. But for a majority of people, calling the Google Voice number will be all that is needed.

And, as what I am seeing as a huge money saver, I have left Vonage (where I was paying $20-25/mo) and came to Ooma. I paid $199+tax at Costco for free U.S. calls for life. Ooma has premium services that you can pay for, but at this point, since I have Google Voice, I don’t see the need just yet. (Note: I had no real negative issues with Vonage. The service was actually very good for the time I had it. But, you can’t blame someone for trying to save some money).

What if Ooma goes out of business? Well, that’s the beauty of Google Voice. I can remove Ooma and add something else to the infrastructure and no one would be the wiser. People know the Google Voice number and don’t really care how (and with what device) I answer the phone on the other side. I am actually considering adding a Skype phone number to my account to see if I can forward numbers to the Skype number for the times I am away from my home and online.

Here are my assumptions about using Google Voice as a communications hub:

1. Google is not going out of business anytime soon. Thus, my Google Voice number can be my number for life.
2. Google Voice will continue to be free (or ad supported), or some reasonable charge if it comes to that.
3. Google Voice will keep my privacy just as well as the government does with respect to my phone calls

We’ll see how this all plays out; but right now I feel excited with my new setup.

Google Voice is in beta right now, but you can sign up for an invitation and these invitations are going out daily.

Well, I would say this is quasi ironic.

Check out the results of the top of this link: http://www.bing.com/search?q=att

Notice how it has a “Bing Cashback” logo at the very top result which is the AT&T Official Wireless Site.

So apparently, if you use Microsoft Bing to buy a phone at AT&T, including the Apple iPhone 3GS, you will get 35% off your purchase!

Microsoft and Apple are “partners” here. Like I said, quasi-ironic.

There is a noted stipulation that this is for new subscribers; that could be true, but I can’t verify it.

Check out these links for more info on this:

FatWallet Forums
MacRumors Forums

And as always, your mileage may vary (YMMV)

However, this past week I had my MacBook Pro out and about around the house way more than usual. I would use the computer on battery a bit, then recharge it when I was done. Stuff like that. But, most of the time, even this week, I would still use the MacBook Pro connected to a power adapter.

So, yesterday (4 April 2009), I used iStatPro (highly recommended widget) to check the health of my battery. It was at around 96% after about 20 cycles. I didn’t think this was too bad. Before I went to bed, I noticed my batter was down to about 35% as I had been using it untethered to my power adapter. So I shutdown the computer, plug it into the power adapter and then went to bed.

This morning (5 April 2009) I woke up to the strangest thing. I noticed the light to my power adapter was *off*. No green light to mean the battery was charged. No red (or is it orange?) light to mean that the battery was charging. Nothing. So I removed the adapter from the MacBook Pro and plugged it back in; then the light went on as to indicate it was charging.

When I booted the computer up, I noticed the battery still had only 35% charge. What the heck? I had it plugged in all night. So I brought up iStatPro again, and here is what I found (except replace the 100% with a 35% because I just took this snapshot right now)

69% health after only 21 cycles!!!!! No way that is normal.

Then I opened up System Profiler and found corroborating evidence.

I tried resetting the SMC, but that didn’t help.

So what is going on here? I must be doing something wrong, right?

Will calibrating the battery help me or am I just screwed and going to have to bring the battery back to the Apple Store again for replacement?

From the Associated Press (AP):

SEATTLE (AP) — Apple Inc. co-founder and Chief Executive Steve Jobs said Wednesday he is taking a medical leave of absence until the end of June — just a week after the cancer survivor tried to assure investors and employees his recent weight loss was simply caused by a treatable hormone deficiency.

Jobs, 53, said in a letter last week that he would remain at Apple’s helm despite the hormone deficiency, and said he had already begun the “relatively simple and straightforward” treatment for the problem. But in an e-mail to employees Wednesday, Jobs backtracked.

“During the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought,” he wrote.

Apple’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, will take over Jobs’ responsibilities while he is on leave.

After-hours trading on Apple shares was halted. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s stock had sank $2.38, or 2.7 percent, to close at $85.33.

Jobs announced in 2004 that he had undergone successful surgery to treat a very rare form of pancreatic cancer — an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The cancer is easily cured if diagnosed early. Jobs did not have a deadlier and more common form of pancreatic cancer called adenocarcinoma.

Here is the letter that Steve Jobs supposedly sent to Apple employees:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

 
I wish Steve Jobs a fast recovery and the best for him and his family.

From the financial side of things, well, all indications are that the stock is going to plummet tonight and open 10%+ lower tomorrow morning. As an Apple stockholder (of the miniscule kind) who has lost a lot of what little money he has put into the stock, I am strongly considering buying some more, especially if they reach the levels I think they might reach tomorrow.

As Robert Scoble said in his post, Apple will continue to have a great team and an awe inspiring brand. Heck, they converted me from a Windows fan boy to a joint Windows and Apple fan boy. Plus, what Robert didn’t mention was that Apple still has about $25-28 billion cash in the bank. That is not too shabby.

Yes, I need to give buying a couple more shares a lot of thought. Of course, as I am not a financial planner, I will not directly advise you to do the same. You need to make your own financial decisions

Ugh!

I tuned in this morning to macrumorslive.com (which is now down) over there at MacRumors see what interesting goodies were going to come from Apple at this, their last MacWorld, and during their first announcement of iLife ’09, I started noticing some strange phrases coming from their twitter-like feed.

Here is a screenshot of the good, normal, G-Rated feed I was watching:

And here is where it got crazy and R-Rated.  I crossed out some things for the innocent  :

I wasn’t very happy about this because MacRumors had the best live feed going, and obviously they had to shut it down. But, it does go to show that hackers are abound, and the next time I am sure that MacRumors will double check their security before going through this circus again.

MacRumors even issued a mea culpa on their site. Good for them! I think MacRumors is still one of the best Apple sites around.

I called Apple support. We talked for about an hour. We tried different things:

• Tried burning a DVD again (just in case magic would happen this time)
• Made sure that I didn’t have any drive permission corruption or something stupid like that — so we repaired my hard drive disk permissions
• Ran a quick hardware test, which showed no problems

None of our initial troubleshooting resulted in success.

So the thinking before the end of the call was that I was going to have to get the drive replaced. I would prefer not to send my computer in a box to who knows where (even though it would be free with AppleCare and I hear good things about it). So we made an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar (again) so that I could bring my computer in, they could have a look at it, and then they can also tell me that the drive needs to be replaced ; then I would have to come back to the Genius Bar for the actual replacement after they ordered the part. (Apparently, Apple phone support and Apple Genius Bar support are totally separate entities, so my call to Apple support could not be used as the definitive answer to replace the drive. The Genius Bar would have to make that decision for themselves. That is why I would have to go twice).

Anyway, right before we hung up, the support representative on the phone just off the cuff said to try a CD/DVD drive laser lens cleaner. I was a little surprised because I always thought these things were frowned upon. I made sure that doing so wouldn’t void my warranty and AppleCare support. She said no. So I decided to give it a shot. Anything to save me two trips to the Apple Store and the possibility of being without my computer for a day or two.

So I went to Target and bought the Memorex Optidisc CD/DVD Lens Cleaner. Came home. Popped in the cleaner CD. It did whatever it does with the little brushes that are pasted on the CD. And the CD ejected.

Pessimistically, I tried to burn some photos to DVD.

WHOA! It worked. I was shocked. A $10 fix, that I should have tried all along. 

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the right solutions, I guess.

(P.S. I highly recommend getting AppleCare for your Mac products, especially big purchase items like a computer or monitor. I usually frown on extended warranties, but I have used it for a couple of issues after my year warranty ended on my MacBook Pro. And if indeed there was a problem with my SuperDrive, having AppleCare means it gets replaced for *free*. AppleCare is good for 3 years after the purchase of your Apple product. And many times you can find the AppleCare for your product cheaper (e.g., Ebay) than buying it directly from Apple).

In my seemingly never ending quest to find comparable applications on the Mac that I have on my Windows PC, I searched for a personal finance package that could replace Microsoft Money.

It was actually a harder task than I thought, and I can’t definitively say that any of the software I looked at blew Microsoft Money out of the water.

As I have said before, I am looking for a program that:

1. Allows for online download of transactions from institutions
2. Keeps track of both bank and investments accounts
3. Looks like a genuine Mac application (not a Windows port)
4. Can generate simple invoices for business and keep track of accounts receivable (for my company Twin Roots).

But below are my findings. I didn’t have a ton of time to do an exhaustive check and review of financial applications for the Mac, so first impressions became *very* important.

Winner

• iBank 3.3.2: Well, this is the best of the bunch in my opinion. Not perfect by any stretch (e.g., not intuitive on manually entering securities in an investment account – have to currently use the “Move Shares” transaction, which is weird). But the interface is absolutely gorgeous in my opinion. Blows all of the other ones out of the water on that front. It handles investments. It downloads data automatically from some institutions (but not all major ones). It DOES NOT have simple business invoicing. I could get iBiz to do that if I want, and the cost would not be much more than Microsoft Money Plus Home and Business. It takes some getting used to, but this is what I consider a true Mac application.

Up and Coming

• Moneywell 1.4: From a potential curve, Moneywell wins. I love the “Envelope Budgeting” method. The interface looks nice. But, it currently cannot not track investments. No way to enter stock holdings, for example. This is coming, I think.

Mysterious

• Quicken Financial Life (QFL): Not out until Summer of 2009. And they would not allow me to be part of the beta, for whatever reason.

The Rest

• MoneyDance 2008 (build 629): I think this would do what I want it to do, but, selfishly, I did not like the user interface. It felt too “Windows-ee” on the Mac, and if I am going to go to the Mac, I want to go all out.
• Cha-Ching 1.2.3: Interface had some nice appeal, but it does not support the tracking of investments.
• Fortora Fresh Finance: Does not support investments from what I could see. The interface seemed fairly nice though.
• SplashMoney: Again, does not support investments
• Liquid Ledger 2: This actually had some potential, but I could not find a way to download transactions from banks, get quotes online for investments and there were bugs seen when deleting accounts (like this mysterious 0 folder that appeared). The interface was fair.
• GnuCash 2.2.8: I could not locate the Mac binary since their wiki was down. First impressions, remember. So I might not have given this one a fair shot, but I had to move on.
• Quicken Mac 2007: I refuse to use any software that does not give me a free trial (at least one readily available on the Quicken Website). Plus knowing that QFL is coming out, there is something just not right about using this version, which, by all accounts, people don’t like anyway.

So, in summary, iBank will be my Mac financial application, as imperfect as it may be. But it is by far the best and most complete financial software package out there for my needs (and if you include iBiz, it would match Microsoft Money in most, if not all, facets). I will wait and see what happens with Moneywell, and I am intrigued by the upcoming release Quicken Financial Life (although I am disappointed I cannot be a part of the beta).

If I am wrong about any of my impressions, I would appreciate you letting me know.

This weekend I went to the Apple Store Genius Bar to see if they could find a resolution to my slot drive problems.

Well, it was the CD-R brand after all! I showed the Genius Bar representative my problems with my Sony (Brand A – I don’t need to protect the innocent anymore) and my Memorex (Brand B) CD-Rs. She popped in a Staples brand CD-R (Yes, a Staples Brand!!!), and it burnt an iTunes playlist flawlessly.

Thus it seems the MacBook Pro slot drive is finicky; but better than having it sent in for repairs.

I am heading to Staples soon.

At least I thought it was harmless.

I have two brand of CD-Rs, let’s just call them Brand A and Brand B in order to protect the presumed innocent.

Brand A: Premature Ejection (and I did use this term purposely to see what “personal problem” jokes I could get )

When I insert Brand A, the slot drive spins and whines for a few seconds and then the slot drive just spits the CD-R out. No message box, no questions, and definitely no answers.

Brand B: Laser Power Levels

When I insert Brand B, the slot drive teases me and actually allows the CD-R to remain inside. I then try to burn my playlist and it actually starts to go through the process. However, my glee is short lived because as soon as the process starts, it ends and I get this wonderful message.

The slot drive will read/play already “burnt” CDs just fine. It will read DVDs when I install software. So initially I thought it was the brand of CD I was using. Other people thought the same thing. Take a look at some of these threads:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=333966

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-31974.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=233×5280

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7540512

There was also this strange fix that worked for some people:

http://bura-bura.com/blog/archives/2005/07/11/a-fix-for-my-superdrive-problems/ (initial post from this person: http://bura-bura.com/blog/archives/2005/07/05/uh-oh-superdrive-problems/)

(It didn’t work for me)

I am not convinced it is the media. I think it is hardware related. The downside of a slot drive I guess.

So I have an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store this weekend. I have AppleCare for my MacBook Pro, and assuming I am right that my slot drive is all messed up, it will be replaced at no cost.

Anyone else have this problem???

Financial Software

I have grown a bit tired of Microsoft Money on my Windows machine. Plus they have stopped making the program, at least for 2009. I am looking for Mac financial software that:

1. Allows for online download of transactions from institutions
2. Keeps track of both bank and investments accounts
3. A great nice to have would be the generation of invoices for business

I might just have to wait for Quicken Financial Life to come out.

Blogging Software

Windows Live Writer (on which I am writing this post) is the best blog writing software available. Bar none. Find me one on the Mac that at least can be in the same discussion, please.

Anti-Virus

I am just interested in seeing if there is a good anti-virus program for the Mac. I probably wouldn’t use it permanently, but I would like to see if such a program would be able to find anything on my Mac.

… and I am still looking for a good online backup service too.