Looks like Google has started giving out invites to Google Voice for people who signed up for invites. I see that two of my blogging buddies got Google Voice. Jim Gaudet thanked Google for Google Voice and Justin Wright slyly added a Google Voice widget to his sidebar.
With the rush of new Google Voice users (I’ve been using it for a while, since I got moved over to Google Voice when Google bought GrandCentral), I thought I’d share a quick video Google released letting users know that you can use Google Voice from your mobile device.
Currently, you can only download the Google Voice mobile application if you’re on a Blackberry or Android powered device. A third party developer has released an iPhone app called GV Mobile or, iPhone and non-Blackberry/Android users can just browse over to the Google Voice web-site and access the features there.
This way, you can share your Google Voice number with everyone, and also call them from the number wherever you are. If you haven’t yet, sign up for Google Voice. It’s free!
Oh, and if you’d like to call me, just scroll down to the bottom of this page and you’ll see a Google Voice call me widget. Talk to you soon!
Hey Adam,
Thanks for the mention.
Great redesign, I like the idea with the social bar on the top. The site looks really great and clean. Snappy too. When did you change it? Have I not been here for a long time?
No problem Jim.
And thanks for the kind words about the redesign. It’s something that I’ve been working on sporadically for the past month or two but finally got it to a point it could go live a few days ago.
Was planning on making a formal announcement a little later next week after I find and fix up any other bugs I find. If you see anything let me know!
Right now, The 42nd Estate logo doesn’t quite sit on the footer line in Firefox (but does in every other browser, even IE!) and I’m still working on getting some of the elements to flow under the header bar (mostly Google ads). But otherwise what you see is what you get.
As for the speed, I did drop some widgets and also enabled Widgets Cache, and made some server tweaks, so all in all, those three plus dropping the big header made it much speedier.
Yeah, I noticed the z-index issue on the Sociable links and the G-ad. I will browse around for a while and see if anything weird happens.
Just installed the Widgets Cache plugin, can’t believe I didn’t know about that one..
Instead of mucking about with the sociable plugin code, I just dropped it and added in some new social icons that flow in the document. Good catch.
Those G-ads are pesky, tried a bunch of different ways, none of em worked. Perhaps it’s best to keep ‘em as is anyway? Increase CTR?
Oh, and with Widgets Cache, make sure you set the cache on each individual widget. The plugin adds a field in the Widgets section. I used times between 1800 – 3600, depending on how quickly data updates in each widget (GFC is at 1800, all the rest at 3600).
Sweet, thanks. I noticed that your video has the same issue with the flow. Can you add a high z-index to your custom nav at the top? Make that super high and hopefully always be in the front..
That did it! Actually didn’t even have a z-index in the nav, though I know I had it in the code before, must have gotten dropped somewhere…anyway fixes up almost all the overflow issues [Firefox 3.5 does a slight offset when the GFC and GV widgets scroll by].
Thanks Jim!
I have head of this before but I never did got an invite.
How can I get an invite?