Placing a Phone Call from Gmail

Google recently added the ability to make free phone calls to Gmail for uses with a Google Voice account. There is a Call Phone link under the Google Chat list next to your Inbox. Making phone calls directly from your Inbox is pretty cool, but let’s take a look at some other useful things you can do including:

• Making Free Calls from your Inbox
• Answering Phone Calls from your Inbox
• Transferring calls from your Cell Phone to your Computer
• Transferring calls from your Computer to your Cell Phone

Log into your Gmail account.

Click the Call Phone link in the panel on the right side of the page.

The Google Voice menu will appear in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Click in the Search field and start typing a person or business name. (This only works if they are one of your Contacts. Otherwise, just use the standard keypad to dial a phone number.)

Your contacts get filtered down to match what you type.

Select the number from your contact and click the Call button.

The call will begin.

Click the End button to end the call.

See it in Action in the Video Tutorial

Here is a step-by-step video showing how to make free calls from Gmail.

Answering Google Voice Calls from Gmail

You can set up Google Voice to ring in your Gmail Mailbox when people call your number.

Log into Google Voice and click the Settings link at the top of the page.

The Phones tab lists all of the phones that you have connected to your Google Voice phone number.

Select the check box next to Google chat to allow your Gmail Mailbox to ring when someone dials your Google Voice number.

Now, the next time you are logged into Gmail and someone calls your Google Voice number, you can answer it right on your computer.

See it in Action in the Video Tutorial

Here is a step-by-step video showing how to make free calls from Gmail.

Transfer Calls To and From Gmail

Once you enable Google Chat as one of your phones, you can send transfer incoming calls to and from any of your other enabled phones, including your Gmail Mailbox.

Transfer a Call from Cell Phone to Google Voice

Suppose you answer a call to your Google Voice number in the car on your cell phone. When you walk into your house or office, you can easily transfer it to your Gmail Mailbox on your computer. This will save your mobile minutes and allow you to talk at your desk.

Any time after you answer a call, just press the Asterisk (*) key on your phone’s keypad.

Then, all of the other phones enabled on your account will start ringing. If you are logged into Gmail, you can just click the Answer button.

Then, just hang up your mobile phone and continue the call on your computer.

Transfer a Call from Google Voice to Cell Phone

If you answer a call to from your Gmail Mailbox, you can transfer it to your mobile phone just as easily.

After you answer a call in your Gmail Mailbox, just click the Asterisk (*) key on your Google Voice menu.

Then, the other phones that are connected to your Google Voice number will ring.

Answer your mobile phone and end the call in your Gmail window.

Now, you can continue the call on your cell phone.

You can use these tricks to maximize the effectiveness of pairing Google Voice with your Gmail account.

What Cool Tricks do You Have?

I would love to hear any cool tricks that you use with Google Voice and Gmail. I will try to feature any good ones in a future article.

Thanks,

Chris

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I work on lots of projects in a very large group. I am always collaborating with several people in order to get things done. One of the things that I have always done well is maintaining positive, productive work relationships. If I could boil my secret down to its most elementary terms it would be" "Please and Thank You". When you need someone else to do something, say please. Be respectful of their time and workload and let them know who much you appreciate their time.

When they take care of it, make sure that you say Thank You. This is even more important than the Please part. You don’t have to go crazy with flowery praise, just let them know that you appreciate their time and effort.

Today a colleague asked me to "help her write one of those nice thank you notes that I’m always sending." She received some valuable help on a project and wanted to let the people know how much it was appreciated.

Here is my secret

When I want to write a simple, effective thank you email to people I use a technique that I learned called Situation Behavior Impact (SBI).

What is SBI?

SBI is a way to deliver positive and "constructive" feedback to people in a concise, effective manner. Think of something good or bad that you need to address with someone. If you break it down into three pieces it is easy to deliver.

Situation –
When did it happen?
What was taking place?
Who was there?

Behavior –
What did the other person do or say?

Impact –
What positive or negative impact did the behavior have on the outcome?

Here is an example:
        SITUATION                                                 BEHAVIOR                        IMPACT
During the staff meeting this morning – your software recommendation – helped us find a great solution to our problem.

Change the Behavior and Impact statements and it works for negative situations too.
       SITUATION                                                 BEHAVIOR                        IMPACT
During the staff meeting this morning – your constant interruptions – kept us from covering the full agenda.

They might not like it, but they’ll understand it.

I have given and received good and bad feedback using this method and it usually works very well.

Making it Your Own

Here’s my secret: I usually use the SBI (Situation Behavior Impact) approach when I do my thank you notes.
I just add in my own casual style to make it feel more human.

For instance:

Here is the behavior:
I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated all of the help that you gave me on the "YOUR FAVOR HERE" the other day "EXACT DAY HERE".

Then I drop the Situation into the next part:  (Not "The Situation" from the Jersey Shore, just the regular one.)
Putting together the "YOUR TASK HERE" was pretty rough. Your support made a big difference.

Now here’s where I bring it on home:

I really appreciate the time and energy that you put in.

THANKS!!!
Count the exclamation points. One – Two – Three. Any less than that makes you an ungrateful taker. Any more and you’re a butt kissing phony.

Here it is all together:

I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated all of the help that you gave me on the "YOUR FAVOR HERE" the other day "EXACT DAY HERE".
Putting together the "YOUR TASK HERE" was pretty rough. Your support made a big difference.
I really appreciate the time and energy that you put in.

Thanks!!!

That’s it. Three simple sentences make a huge difference. Now, the next time you need a favor, you’ll have someone who is much more willing to help.

By the way: Today, when you took the time to read my article, it made me very happy. Thanks!!!

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Kevin Rose (Digg.com Founder) recently published a post on his blog where he “broke” the news of the next itteration of the Apple TV device as iTV.

He went on to gush about how incredible his majesty at Apple has made it. The new iTV is supposed to be the biggest game changer in the living room since the invention of the color television. He also says that it will spell the sudden “Death of Cable TV”.

Oh Reaaaaaly?

1. First, let’s start with Kevin Rose’s credibility regarding Apple commentary and predictions.
2. Does anybody else see him as an overly biased Apple fanboy/appologist?
3. Wow, he got Copy and Paste and iPod Nano right. Only every single writer in the world was begging for this. I’m shocked that Apple decided to address their biggest feature omission. There is a leaked Apple product published every hour. Somebody is bound to get one right.

Will iTV OWN the Living Room?

First of all, there have been a handful of half-baked products fumbling around in this space for a while now. None of them have exactly distinguished themselves. I think that it will be the best attempt yet at a living room media center. That being said, Apple’s ridiculous Nazis Lawyers will probably cripple it into being not that awesome. That being said, I hope that it is cool enough to force Microsoft and Sony to kick their consoles into high gear.

Is iTV or Anyting Else Poised to KILL Cable TV?

Don’t be so fast to cut your cable bill. Who do you think you’re going to get your broadband from? That’s right, the Cable and Phone company. Maybe you will be able to do that, but your broadband bill will go up to $100/month. They own the TV and Internet, do you think that they are going to give up their cash cow and let you have it’s replacement for nothing? I live in the New York Metropolitan area and the three broadband options avaiable are FIOS, Cablevision (Optimum Online) and Comcast. Each of their standalone broadband products START at $50 per month. Then throw in the cost of an iTV ($99), iTunes downloads, Hulu Pro, Netflix, Amazon On-Demand, and other services and where are you? Right up around the price of Cable. Plus, you have to buy, configure, search for, and download this half-assed new TV replacement on your own. Yeah, my parents and their friends should all be super psyched to do all of that.

More likely, you will probably see them finally start to offer A La Carte channel purchasing.

Broadband Providers do not have the bandwidth to simultaneously stream American Idol to every house on your block in High Definition. Despite all of the articles that you read on these tech blogs, broadband companies will not have the necessary bandwidth for a while either. (Think 5 years or so.)

Ask yourself this: “Has a YouTube video stuttered or paused on my this week?” Exactly, and they’re the BEST at streaming video. And a lot of it is not in HD.

Other Factors

Despite everybody’s complaining, Cable, Sattelite, and Fiber TV actually works. You turn on the TV and pick from tons of channels of video that instantly and flawelessly flow into your house. If you turn on 5 TVs in your house, they still all work fine. Try that over broadband.

The devil you know. Everybody I know already has their TV solution in place. Most people don’t dump something that they know for something that they don’t know. Especially if the thing they already have pretty much works. Think about it: are your parents going to ditch cable for a media pc, Apple TV, Google TV, or Roku player? No, mine neither.

What Could Prove Me Wrong?

The one thing that could make this more feasible is if other providers get into the residential broadband delivery game.

Cell Phone Companies – Verizon and AT&T keep beefing up their 3G networks, but I’m thinking that they need to be more like 11G. Sprint could also be a player with their much ballyhooed and troubled WiMax rollout. Tmobile – nevermind.

Sattelite Providers – If these clowns ever figure out how to use their base of installed hardware to transmit realistic broadband signals up and down, they might be players.

Dark Horse Candidates

Teir 1 Internet Service Providers – There area a handful of companies that actually carry all of the internet traffic over long distances. Think of them as the Interstate Highways that deliver traffic between the neighborhoods that your ISP (Level 2 or lower) serves.

Here are the major players: AT&T, Cogent, Level3, NTT, Qwest, Savvis, SBC, Sprint, Verizon, and XO

Some of these player “could” trow up some sort of wireless towers on heavily populated network “end points” and deliver broadband to large groups of people. This is possible, but somewhat unlikely.

I would love to hear what you think

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OVERVIEW: Learn how to maximize the on page SEO value of your articles by catering to human readers.

Do you want Google to understand exactly what your article is about?

Do you want Google to know what keywords to associate with your content?

Well, here are some simple steps to help you tell Google exactly what your page is about while making your readers happy.

Write for Humans Not Search Engines

Just because search engines are referred to as “spiders” or “robots” does not mean that you need to write like one. If you use a basic, sound writing approach, the search engines will be able to determine exactly what your articles are about.

What do I mean by “sound writing approach”? Simple, write your articles the way you learned to write and essay in school. Start out with an outline approach. Title, main ideas, then supporting points. Outline your article BEFORE you start typing and it will make a lot more sense.

There are a few basic elements that you need to consider to add high SEO value to your writing:

• Formatting
• Writing Style
• Use of Images
• Linking
• Metadata

Formatting – Your Article’s Tour Guide

The formatting that you apply to your article’s content has a tremendous impact on assisting both readers and search engines. Think about how a newspaper, textbook, or magazine is formatted. There are important visual clues that take you by the hand and guide you through the writing. All along the way there are signs that say, “This is the main idea”; “pay attention to this”; or “here is a group of items”. Readers and search engines both love a good tour guide.

• Headings – bold text that tells the reader (and Google) what the following sections of a document are about. They take the reader by the hand and lead them through the writing. Google likes to have its hand held too. Use the H1, H2, H3, and H4 tags to announce and prioritize topics. Add your keywords into the headings in a way that makes sense.
• Bold Text – Bold words in a paragraph signal an important piece of information. Google knows this too.
• Italics – They let you know that there is something special, unique, or strange about the text.
• Bullets – Bullet points and Numbered lists indicate a group of short related topics or steps. These break up the page for the reader.

The following image shows how these formatting elements should look:

Write with Active Voice

Write using the Active Voice to interest your readers (as opposed to Passive Voice). What is active voice? Strunk and White’s Elements of Style defines the Active Voice as, “more direct and vigorous than the passive“.

Say it this way: “Type your name in the Customer field” not this way: “The Customer field is where you will type your name“. The first one is much more direct and assertive; while the second kind of suggests that you can do it if you’re in the mood. Readers love action.

Think of how you search for things. The active voice content not only reads better, it lines up with search strings very well.

Images – a Picture is Worth More than you Think

Add catchy, pertinent images to your site to add to your reader’s experience. Images are not just nice to look at; they can provide some “below-the-radar” SEO value too. The File Name, Title and Alt tags of an image provide information about the image to readers and search engines. If a search engine finds a few images of a certain person, place, or topic it figures that the article must be related.

Another big benefit of properly named images is Google Image Search. I am always amazed at how many visits Google Image Search sends to my site each month. People search for images and see ones from your site. When they click on the image, Google sends them to the page on your site where the image is embedded. Lots of people click through and poke around on your site as a result.

The following image shows the proper way to to name and describe your images for the search engines and readers.

Added Bonus: The screen readers that blind people use to read web pages will use the information in the ALT tag to tell the reader about the image. This helps them gain information that they ordinarily would miss. It pays to be nice.

Properly Formatted Links Help Everyone

Google does not just pay attention to who links to you, they also care who you link to. If you are linking to valuable authorities on a topic, that adds credibility to your article too. There are two parts of your link that add useful SEO information: the Anchor Text and the Title Attribute.

The Anchor Text is the text that is displayed as a link on the page. The Title Attribute comes after the link’s URL in the HTML code. This adds additional descriptive information about the link destination. You should make your links’ titles short, but coherent. (see below)

FYI: If you are linking to your own articles, this gives those pages the same benefits.

Metadata

Metadata is information about a larger block of data. Think of a car as the large block of data and the year, make, and model as the metadata. They all help you understand more about the car being discussed.

The main pieces of metadata for your articles and pages are Title, Description, Keywords (tags), and the URL.

Title – This tells readers and search engines what an article is about. This is the King of the SEO castle.

Description – A brief text description of your article (160 characters). This is the text that displays below your title in search engine results. Matching search terms will be highlighted. Carefully place appropriate keywords in your description text.

Keywords / Tags – Short words or phrases that relate to your article. Choose a handful of accurate tags for your articles.

URL – The unique page address after you domain name. This is helpful to readers and search engines. Which URL do you think contains Baseball Standings?

http://www.mlb.com/players

http://www.mlb.com/tickets

http://www.mlb.com/standings

Exactly! That’s why your article permalinks (URLs) are important.

Let Plug-ins Help You Out

If your blog is built on WordPress you can use dozens of excellent plug-ins to boost your content’s seo value. Mashable has a great roundup of choices. I use a few of them here.

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Printable Productivity Tips for Your Computer

I had to do a Lunch & Learn session at work recently on Windows and Microsoft Office productivity tips. I covered a some of the following topics:

• Shortcuts Keystrokes for Windows, Office, I.E. and More
• Creating a Shortcut to any Folder
• Using Shortcuts to Increase Speed and Convenience
• Using Two Monitors on your Computer
• Controlling Another Computer Using RDP Software

I put together a handout that showed how to do all of the tips that I was demonstrating. Everybody seemed to like it and find it helpful. I cleaned it up and made it into a PDF file that you can print out.

Download it, print it, use it, and share it. Enjoy!

Download the Windows And Office Productivity Tips Printable Guide

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