As of July 29th, Livescribe will close its third-party developer program. With cloud technology and mobile information access becoming increasingly important to our customers, Livescribe is realigning its focus and resources on cloud access, storage and services. Our recent introduction of Livescribe Connect, which enables customers to easily send notes and audio, as a pencast PDF, to people or destinations of their choice like Google Docs, Evernote, email, and Facebook, is an important step in this direction.

Applications in our online store will remain available for download and purchase pending compatibility with future Livescribe software updates. We will continue to accept applications submitted for publishing in our online store, as well as pattern credit requests through July 22nd. At this time, the SDKs and developer website will no longer be available. If your application is close to completion and you would like to have it posted in our store, please contact us atdeveloper@livescribe.com for support.

We greatly appreciate the time, effort and support you have given to Livescribe and our platform over the past three years.

Thank you again for your contributions.

Sincerely,

Joyce & Michael, Livescribe Developer Programs Team

Byron Connell, Livescribe CMO

The full announcement is available on Livescribe’s website here: http://www.livescribe.com/errors/developer.html As one of the major custom paper developers, I was rather disappointed with Livescribe’s decision as Livescribe’s platform is one that I have greatly enjoyed developing for. I get between 4-5 thousand page views a month on this website and at least half of those are from people who are interested in using my custom paper products. Within the weeks that followed, I saw many, many forum posts, emails, and comments on this website all filled with one message:

I’m a new Smartpen user. Now that Livescribe’s closed the Developer Program, is it over? Am I too late to join in and use Custom Paper?

The preceding is my paraphrased version of several Private Messages sent to me through the Livescribe Forums. Unfortunately a recent forum overhaul has prevented me from accessing any of those Private Messages and I was forced to paraphrase from my memory. At first, I was forced to tell them that yes, they were too late. But that soon changed with the release of my Custom Paper Deployment Tool. Since then, I have been getting many requests from users to develop different kinds of custom paper including music staff paper and I have been forced to tell them that I cannot simply because I do not have access to any additional pattern license. I have been directing users to this thread on Livescribe’s Get Satisfaction page: http://getsatisfaction.com/livescribe/topics/tommy-1l7gjj and asking them to add their voices to the people asking Livescribe to bring the Developer’s Program back. Jeff, a member of Livescribe’s customer support team is working internally to make sure that people inside Livescribe know that we want this. If you want the Developer’s Program back, which will allow the creation of additional applications and custom paper products, please go here: http://getsatisfaction.com/livescribe/topics/tommy-1l7gjj and tell Livescribe that! The more people that voice this sentiment, the greater the chance that Livescribe will listen to us and bring back the Developer’s Program.

New Features

• Today I am happy to announce that using the “File” –> “Open” menu options, users can manually select .afd files and deploy them using my Custom Paper Deployment Tool. Under the “Open” menu there are two options “File” and “Folder”. “File” allows users to deploy .afd files one at a time. However, if you have a directory full of files and want to install all of the .afd inside it at once, you can use the “Folder” option to select the directory with the files in it, and it will install all of them at once.
• The “Tools” –> “Smartpen” –> “List Installed Packages” function has been enabled and is now functioning. This allows users to connect their smartpen and view a complete list of all installed packages on their smartpen. This includes all Livescribe packages as well as all custom packages.

I would also like to note that as of now: http://xname.org DNS is now back in sync with all three of their DNS servers so my domains are routing correctly now. The plan is to eventually setup cname records to push out a new update (or two) with a seamless transition for user back to the install.rohankapoor.com install domain while still hosting on Amazon’s S3 platform. This should be seamless with an estimated 3 updates to the Custom Paper Deployment Tool. If you have not downloaded the new version since I changed the url, it is recommended that you do so, so as to not miss the updates.

With the end of Livescribe’s Development Program, it is no longer possible for end users (or even developers) to download the SDK and deploy any of the numerous Custom Paper Products made by developers such as myself (among others). For a while now, I have been discussing the possibility of Livescribe creating and releasing a tool that installs third party Custom Paper Products to their smartpens. For various reasons, none of which will be discussed here, Livescribe did not release such a tool. I have been toying with the idea of building one myself for the last year, however I have not done so assuming that Livescribe will at some point do so. At this point, with Livescribe closing their Developer Program, it is obvious that they will not be releasing such a tool now.

The other reason I was hesitating with building this tool was that it would be coded in C# which I have had zero experience coding in before. I’m primarily a Java programmer with experience with both C++ and PHP (all of which use very similar syntax). Seeing no tool forthcoming from Livescribe and not wanting Custom Paper Products to be a product of the past (no pun intended), I finally dove right into it! I During this process, I learned that C# is nowhere near as complicated as I feared and most of the Syntax still applies from C++. With minimal googling, I was able to build a fully functional Custom Paper Deployment Tool using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 as my Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Please note that the Custom Paper Deployment Tool is not supported by Livescribe in any way, shape or form. As the Developer Program has ended, this tool is not associated with it at all. There is no warranty (either explicit or implicit) on the tool. I do not take any responsibility if anything adverse were to happen to your smartpen because of my tool. By going to the bottom of the page and clicking-through to the installer page, you agree to the terms and conditions listed above.  This tool is available freely to all users by following the download link at the bottom of the page.

You can download the current version (1.0.0.13) from the Custom Paper Deployment Tool homepage. Further information regarding Custom Paper Deployment Tool is available there. Along with the Custom Paper Deployment Tool, I am today releasing eight 150 page Lab Notebooks along with eight 25 page Unlined Notepads. Simultaneously, I have increased the number of all notepads to eight of each type. Stay tuned for their individual release pages coming up along with individual download links. The download for Custom Paper Deployment Tool includes all of the files needed to deploy and print all 32 of these Notepads so there is no need to download them individually anymore! As with all of my Livescribe related downloads, Custom Paper Deployment Tool is compatible with both Echo and Pulse Smartpens.

Dropbox uses Amazon’s S3 for storage. Amazon’s S3 service states 99.999999999% or 99.99% reliability on its storage backend (depending on whether reduced redundancy or normal redundancy storage is purchased). With Dropbox using Amazon’s S3, data reliability was not a concern to me. Dropbox states that all files are transmitted to their servers in an encrypted form and remain that way till they are back on one of the owner’s computers. They also say that additional layers of security can be achieved by using Truecrypt or another volume encryption software to hold all the data within secure file volumes. For my purposes the SSL transfer between my computers and Dropbox is good enough security for me. My netbook (which is my only computer that leaves the house) is fully encrypted with Windows 7 Bitlocker and so I believe my data is reasonably secure.

Dropbox is primarily a file synchronizing service and synchronization of files is done exceptionally well. I am very grateful that it keeps all conflicted files, allowing me to figure out which file got saved at the wrong time (This is critical when used with Microsoft Outlook). It syncs quickly, changing only the changed bytes of the files rather than synchronizing the whole file again. I’ll explain why this useful to me a little later on as I explain several of my specific Dropbox uses. Dropbox also has a full web interface with access to upload and download any files from any device with an internet browser. For me this is a perfect “last resort,” in case I forget my netbook, its battery gets drained or something worse happens to it. By keeping copies of all files within the cloud, Dropbox doesn’t have to wait for me to have all of my computers on to sync the files, as each one turns on and off, it syncs with the storage on the web and the latest versions of my files are always there. This makes the ease of access that much better, I just have to make sure that Dropbox has finished syncing before shutting down my computers or putting them to sleep.

Dropbox offers a full 2 gigabytes (2 GB) of storage space for free with any sign up. They also offer 250 megabytes (250 MB) of additional space for every user that you refer to their service. The additional space gained from referrals is doubled for those who have .edu email addresses. Recently, they also offered a scavenger-hunt promotion called Dropquest where they gave users another full gigabyte (1 GB). They also give 128 megabytes (128 MB) each for connecting your Dropbox account to Facebook and Twitter and posting about it there. See this page for more details. Currently I have 9.5 gigabytes of free Dropbox storage space of which I am using 39.6%.

It is clear that I am very happy with the service that Dropbox provides. It fits my file synchronization needs perfectly. In the last year, I can remember two instances when Dropbox was offline and both were rather short periods (several hours maximum) of time that therefore didn’t affect me very much. I have been able to depend on Dropbox to have my files where I need them, wherever I need them and so far it hasn’t failed me.

I use Dropbox to synchronize many different types of files for an equally diverse number of purposes. First I have the usual smattering of Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. For my school work, I have hundreds of these documents, all sorted nicely into a folder hierarchy under my main Dropbox folder. I also have a large quantity of Adobe PDF files. These are scanned notes from before I started using my smartpen and my netbook all the time for all notes. Most of these PDF files are organized and in the same hierarchy, however due to their sheer volume, many of them have not been sorted, split up and filed yet. Those files also live in a “to be sorted” folder within my Dropbox folder so that when I have a few moments of time, I can quickly sort another couple of files. I am a big user of Microsoft OneNote. I use it exclusively for most of my classes and I use it for other notes as well. I have nearly 10 actively used OneNote notebooks and all of them live within my Dropbox folder hierarchy. What’s exceptionally nice about using OneNote for this is that it automatically saves every few seconds while I am working. This means that if for any reason something were to go wrong with my computer while I was working in class, I would lose no more than one minute’s notes as they are constantly being synched to Dropbox.

One of the more complicated files to synchronize via Dropbox is my Outlook.pst file. My email, contacts, and calendar are all managed by Google Apps for My Domain and while I love Google Apps, there are places where I go that there is limited Wi-Fi and the offline versions of Google Apps just don’t cut it for me. I use Google’s synchronization tools to keep my calendar in sync with Microsoft Outlook. Email works natively over the imap protocol. Contacts are synched as well using a tool called GoContactSync. All three of these are synched wirelessly from my Google Apps account to my Windows Mobile 6.5 running Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 as well as my Barnes & Noble NookColor. The one thing missing here is tasks. I’ve tried using Google’s calendar based task system but it was not robust enough for me. One thing that I absolutely require for tasks is categories. Google Calendar Tasks have no support for categories, nor is there a free way to sync them with Outlook and Windows Mobile. To keep tasks in sync between my various computers, the only solution that worked simply for me was simply putting the whole Outlook.pst file in Dropbox and letting it sync it. The first time it took a little longer (because of how large my PST file is) and Outlook had to be manually told where I moved it. However, I have had zero problems with this approach as long as I close Outlook and wait for it to fully sync out before switching computers. Failing to do so results in lots of duplicate copies of Outlook.pst because every little change I make in Outlook causes it to write to the PST file. With Dropbox, however, this is not very bad as a quick look at the tray icon tells me exactly what files in the Dropbox folder are still being accessed. I should add that I’m not syncing my larger than 2 gigabytes (2+ GB) email archive PST files. I am simply syncing the Outlook.pst file. Because I use imap, I let each computer keep its own Outlook email archive in sync on its own. The problem with synchronizing the Outlook.pst file is that it doesn’t always gracefully close. I normally close Microsoft Outlook, wait for Dropbox to sync and then put my computer to sleep. I then switch computers, keep working in Outlook and then repeat those steps when I’m switching computers again. Sometimes however, as soon as Windows resumes from sleep, a background process attempts to access Outlook.pst which is out of date as the latest version hasn’t been downloaded by Dropbox yet. This creates a conflicted Outlook.pst file as Dropbox downloads the real one and renames the conflict with a timestamp. What’s nice is that on the off chance that the synced copy is the wrong one; I can quickly delete it and rename the conflict to take its place.

I use a Livescribe Echo Smartpen which uses the proprietary application called Livescribe Desktop to synchronize data with a PC. The data is kept in a proprietary format in a folder tree in the Application Data (or AppData for Windows Vista & Windows 7 users) folder. Once I finish using a physical notebook or notepad with my Smartpen, I archive the data off of the pen to the desktop application and no longer carry around the full notebook with me. That means that if I need to access the data, I need to have an updated copy of my notes from Livescribe Desktop with me at all times. Dropbox doesn’t natively support syncing files outside of its folder. To get it to synchronize data from Livescribe Desktop, I had to literally move all of my Livescribe data files to the Dropbox folder and then use a form of trickery called symlinks to make Windows (and through it) Livescribe Desktop believe that the data was still there. I’ve outlined the whole process in this post. My apologies if that post appears very convoluted as there is a lot of text without pictures. Please note that I do plan to rectify that and add pictures to the tutorial with the next update of it. I also use symlinks to store my Mindjet MindManager maps folder in my Dropbox and still have MindManager’s open map dialog default to the correct folder. I have not outlined how to do so, however, if there is sufficient interest, I will write up a tutorial post for it.

This website is powered by WordPress as the backend platform on top of which plugins and themes have been layered. I like to keep backups of this website just in case something happened to the original live website. I have spent a lot of time developing content and various unique solutions and if they were to be lost, I would (naturally) be very, very upset. I use a plugin called wp Time Machine to make those backups. I have it configured to automatically generate the backup, and then push it to me via Dropbox whenever I publish a new post. Because it stores backups in Dropbox, I get the same inherent protection for my website backups as I do for any other file within my Dropbox.

All in all, Dropbox is one the best tools I began using in 2010. In the 15 months that I have been using it daily, I have had very few disconnects from their servers along with several duplicate files being created. As I said earlier, their reliability is excellent and a couple of small server disconnects isn’t going to change that. Quite honestly, the service that Dropbox provides is indispensable to me. After a year of using it, I can definitely say that I made the right choice when I chose Dropbox to provide cloud synchronization services for my files! And as I continue to use my three computer system, I will use Dropbox to synchronize my files between them!

Instructions and Downloads are available: http://rohankapoor.com/projects/livescribe/lined-notepads-1-4/

Post a comment if you have any questions or concerns!

For reference the Livescribe Folder is located at “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe\Desktop” (on Windows XP). For Windows Vista or Windows 7, the folder is located at “C:\Users\Username\Appdata\Local\Livescribe\Desktop”. It’s not as long but since I use both Windows XP and Windows 7 between computers, it’s another path to remember. At first I thought I would create a network share (on my Desktop) and then use Offline Files to synchronize the Livescribe folder with the network share. The only problem being that I’m often switching between multiple computers very quickly and it takes time for Offline Files to synchronize because it doesn’t sync on the fly.

I started looking at various other services that allow synchronizing and was tempted to try out Windows Live Sync Beta. Thing is, I had used it several times before and one major gripe with it is that the data isn’t in the cloud so I have to have all of my computers on all the time to make sure they get the updates. This led me to dropbox.

For those of you who don’t know, Dropbox is a file synchronization software that has a huge back-end within the cloud. It uses Amazon’s popular S3 service for data and allows each free user 2GB of space. Also, if you haven’t signed up for Dropbox yet and would like to, if you sign up using my link, we will both get and additional 250 MB free. This is plenty of room for syncing the Livescribe data at least for now. So what Dropbox does is sync any files within your Dropbox folder with all of your computers and devices. I know what you’re thinking. The problem here is that Livescribe Desktop expects it’s folder to be at a specific location and that location isn’t your Dropbox folder. Of course, Dropbox can only sync files that are within your Dropbox Folder and the Livescribe Data folder certainly isn’t there…

So then here’s the solution! It’s called symlinks. Symlink is short for Symbolic Link. Now what does Symbolic Link mean?

In computing, a symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution. Symbolic links were already present by 1978 in mini-computer operating systems from DEC and Data General’s RDOS. Today they are supported by the POSIX operating-system standard, most Unix-like operating systems such as Mac OS X, and also Windows operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7 and to some degree in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Symbolic links operate transparently for most operations: programs which read or write to files named by a symbolic link will behave as if operating directly on the target file. However, programs that need to handle symbolic links specially (e.g., backup utilities) may identify and manipulate them directly.

– From: Wikipedia contributors. “Symbolic link.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Aug. 2010. Web. 1 Sep. 2010.

Basically that means that a Symbolic Link will allow us to store data somewhere and make it appear seamlessly to be somewhere else. This is the solution to using Dropbox with Livescribe Desktop. All we have to do is move the Livescribe Desktop folder to the Dropbox folder and then Symlink it to it’s normal location!

In addition to Dropbox and Livescribe Desktop you will need the free Junction Utility from Microsoft Sysinternals. Go ahead and download that now. I’ll wait!

Before we begin, I should add that all commands that must be entered in the command prompt are surrounded by “”. You don’t need to the enter those ones but any of them within the code itself is imperative to enter.

All right! Let’s go!

First you need to decide if you are on Windows XP or on Windows Vista/Windows 7. While the directions are very similar, there are several key differences between them. Windows XP directions will come first, followed by Windows Vista/Windows 7. Please remember that in all of the directions you have to replace Username with your own username.

Transfer your Livescribe Data to Dropbox if it is on a Windows XP Computer

1. Remember that download I had you make? Well it was a zip file. Unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”.
2. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe”. Move the folder “Desktop” from the Livescribe Folder to your Desktop.
3. Exit Livescribe Desktop
4. In another Windows Explorer window, open your Dropbox folder, usually: “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox”.
5. Now make a new folder named “Livescribe” in the “My Dropbox” folder.
6. Move the “Desktop” folder to the “Livescribe” folder in your “My Dropbox” folder. Dropbox will now start indexing and uploading your data. Depending on your connection speed and amount of data, this may take several hours.
7. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
8. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
9. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop”". This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
10. You can delete the backup of the Desktop folder on your Desktop at this point, if you so choose.
11. At this point you just successfully transferred your Livescribe Desktop folder to your Dropbox account. Just remember to only have Livescribe Desktop running on one computer at a time and your data should remain intact. However, there is no way I can guarantee that and you should always keep backups. I am not liable if you lose your data.

Use Your Livescribe Data in Dropbox with Another Install of Livescribe Desktop on Windows XP

1. If this computer doesn’t already have Junction on it, download it and then unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”.
2. Set up Dropbox on the computer. Your data may take some time to download especially if you have a very full Dropbox.
3. Exit Livescribe Desktop.
4. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe”.
5. Delete the folder “Desktop” that is within.
6. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
7. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
8. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop”". This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
9. At this point you have successfully setup Livescribe Desktop on another computer to access your Livescribe data stored in Dropbox. Just remember that Dropbox can’t sync that data while Livescribe Desktop is open so after exiting it, give it a few minutes to finish syncing.

Transfer your Livescribe Data to Dropbox if it is on a Windows Vista or Windows 7 Computer

1. Remember that download I had you make? Well it was a zip file. Unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”. User Account Control may ask for permission. You have to give it that.
2. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe”. Move the folder “Desktop” from the Livescribe Folder to your Desktop.
3. Exit Livescribe Desktop
4. In another Windows Explorer window, open your Dropbox folder, usually: “C:\Users\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox”.
5. Now make a new folder named “Livescribe” in the “My Dropbox” folder.
6. Move the “Desktop” folder to the “Livescribe” folder in your “My Dropbox” folder. Dropbox will now start indexing and uploading your data. Depending on your connection speed and amount of data, this may take several hours.
7. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
8. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
9. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Users\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop”". This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
10. You can delete the backup of the Desktop folder on your Desktop at this point, if you so choose.
11. At this point you just successfully transferred your Livescribe Desktop folder to your Dropbox account. Just remember to only have Livescribe Desktop running on one computer at a time and your data should remain intact. However, there is no way I can guarantee that and you should always keep backups. Once again, let me remind you that I am not liable if you lose your data.

Use Your Livescribe Data in Dropbox with Another Install of Livescribe Desktop on Windows Vista or Windows 7

1. If this computer doesn’t already have Junction on it, download it and then unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”. Once again, User Account Control may ask for permission. You have to give it that.
2. Set up Dropbox on the computer. Your data may take some time to download especially if you have a very full Dropbox.
3. Exit Livescribe Desktop.
4. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe”.
5. Delete the folder “Desktop” that is within.
6. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
7. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
8. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Users\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop”". This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
9. At this point you have successfully setup Livescribe Desktop on another computer to access your Livescribe data stored in Dropbox. Just remember that Dropbox can’t sync that data while Livescribe Desktop is open so after exiting it, give it a few minutes to finish syncing.

Congratulations! If you followed these directions correctly your Livescribe Desktop data should now be happily syncing through Dropbox and accessible on all of your computers. I must caution you one more time however, never to have Livescribe Desktop running on multiple computers simultaneously. Dropbox will not be sync the data and you will most likely end up losing a significant portion of it. Once again, I must remind you that I take no liability if you do lose your data. However, I do believe that the likelihood of that happening is very slim, especially if you read all of the directions listed above before you begin. If you have any problems with this, please post a comment and I will try to help you.

As far as I know, a similar technique will work with Dropbox and Livescribe Desktop on a Mac. According to Livescribe however, it is not possible to currently transfer data between the Mac and Windows versions of Livescribe Desktop. Supposedly, it is incompatible. However, I personally have no way of finding it out because I have zero Macs to try it with. If anyone wants to try it, please remember to back up before trying and do let me know so that I can update this post. And yes, even though there is a Dropbox for Linux, the lack of a Livescribe Desktop application for it, makes syncing your data there a moot point.

Google Voice is one of Google’s latest endeavors. Their philosophy is not one phone number per device, but rather one phone number per person. It’s an amazing philosophy and the results are pretty damn impressive! Google Voice is currently a private beta and is invitation only. An invitation is also rather hard to obtain for those of us without friends already using Google Voice. I emailed a few of mine and a couple hours later, I was the proud recipient of a Google Voice invitation! I signed up and decided to give it a whirl.

Currently, in terms of phone services, I have a home phone number (powered by Vonage) as well as a cellular device, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 with AT&T as the service provider. I love the fact that Vonage emails me transcriptions of my voice messages and allows me to listen to them from the web-based interface. Unfortunately, AT&T does not. This means that my voice messages are in two different places and makes things much harder to look for. My main reason for looking into Google Voice was so that I could get all of my messages transcribed and emailed to me. It makes life much easier when all of your messages come to one inbox!

As part of the Google Voice signup process, I had to choose my new “Google Number”, effectively this is just a standard phone number powered by Google Voice! Here’s the cool part, it allows me to have free national calling as well as extremely low rates to most countries. Not quite as low as Vonage but still much lower than AT&T! The beauty of it is that whenever anyone calls my new Google Number, it will automatically ring both my Vonage phone and my Xperia X1 and whichever one I answer with will take the call. Of course, there is a boatload of other features that Google Voice offers as well and all of them are truly amazing solutions! Best of all Google Voice is free! You can view the full feature list here.

After looking through Google Voice and all of it’s features it seems that Google has the infrastructure set up to successfully replace my phone company. Unfortunately for them, they were unable to buy the airwave space that they required in order to become a cellular phone company. For now however, I don’t see Google Voice replacing my phone companies but rather working along with them to add features and functionality at low cost. In the future, however, I could definitely see Google replacing my phone company with Google Voice and I would guess that they would do a brilliant job at it. I for one would be willing to pay Google for the service, though I do prefer free over fee any day.

For a beta product, Google Voice certainly is a very impressive service. It’s something you notice with Google a lot. All of their products that are considered beta or even pre-alpha are very good quality. Honestly speaking their beta products are a lot of time better than paid products from other companies! In fact, I’m writing this from Google Chrome for Linux unstable on Ubuntu 9.04. That means pre-alpha stage. Guess what? In the two months that I’ve been using it, the only thing it can’t do is print successfully — something that Google warned me about before I installed Chrome for Linux. It’s something I do rarely as it is and if I ever do need to print, it doesn’t take too much effort to fire up Mozilla Firefox and print from there.

Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

The Ubuntu team has really done a great job here. From every release of Ubuntu, they have been true to the official Ubuntu philosophy. The free price tag doesn’t hurt either!

Anyways, I’m downloading 9.10 Desktop from the torrent and right now, it’s taken about 10 minutes and is already 75% done. Here’s the link to the torrent!

I’ll probably end up running an install or an upgrade by this weekend, and then I’ll be sure to let all of you guys know, how it is!!

Stay tuned for more about Ubuntu 9.10 | Karmic Koala!