Call Ralph Woods for Free

[TotallyOz]

My link

Google is now adding free calling to the USA and other parts of the world. See their article for more details.

[Guest FourAces]

What happened to truth in advertising I read the subject line and thought I would find Ralph's mobile number in the post

Actually a really nice feature once again from Google. Thanks for posting the link.

[TotallyOz]

I have been testing this today. It is fantastic. Easy to use and fantastic clarity.

[lookin]

I understand the new service will also allow callers to leave voicemails which can then be transcribed as emails and texts.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/26/MNGI1F37PS.DTL

Hi, Ralph. It's lookin! I'll be in Montreal this week and was hoping to get a chance to see you. I'll be hanging out in The Village again. I promise to keep my distance though, and I sure hope the gendarmerie won't have to get involved like last time. For some reason they thought I was 'stalking' you. Imagine! Hope you'll be wearing that tank top and those dreamy short shorts! You know how sexy you look, and I'll be trying out my new telephoto camera. I get in on Friday afternoon. Ta ta for now!

Best of all, Google will be able to store all my voicemails, along with all my GMail (assuming I ever decide to use it), and all the posts I've ever made in my life (including this one) for as long as they like on their giant servers. And I don't see any technical reason why they couldn't store the actual phone conversations themselves, should they take a notion. All digital, all searchable, all the time. Hi, Eric!

Sure I'm having some fun and going a bit over the top. Or am I?

We know what Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, thinks about privacy.

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know,

maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html

Eric Schmidt suggested that young people should be entitled to change their identity to escape their misspent youth, which is now recorded in excruciating detail on social networking sites such as Facebook.

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.

In an Interview Mr Schmidt said he believed that every young person will one day be allowed to change their name to distance themselves from embarrasssing photographs and material stored on their friends' social media sites.

The 55-year-old also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.

Using profiles of it customers and tracking their locations through their smart phones, it will be able to provide live updates on their surroundings and inform them of tasks they need to do.

"We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Mr Schmidt said. “One idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type.

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

He suggested, as an example, that because Google would know “roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are”, it could remind users what groceries they needed to buy when passing a shop.

The comments are not the first time Mr Schmidt has courted controversy over the wealth of personal information people reveal on the internet. Last year, he notoriously remarked: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Earlier this year, Google was condemned by the privacy watchdogs of 10 countries for showing a “disappointing disregard” for safeguarding private information of its users.

In a letter to Mr Schmidt, Britain's Information Commissioner Chris Graham joined his counterparts in countries including Canada, France, Germany and Italy, in raising concerns over its Street View and Buzz social networking services.

I don't hear much about such privacy concerns in the U. S., especially since the Patriot Act was passed, so I figure it's up to each of us to decide how much Google we want in our lives.

Me? I'm in the market for a nice sturdy ten-foot pole.

Oops! Sorry, Ralph, I didn't mean you!! Call me!

[MsGuy]

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.

...

The 55-year-old also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.

...

"We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Mr Schmidt said. One idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type.

...

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

With any luck at all, I'll be gone, dead & buried before we get that far into the Singularity. That's one particular dystopia I'm not ready to dive into.

[lookin]

I'm over here in the shallow end myself, MsGuy. It hit me a year or so ago that I think I prefer being in my sixties now to being in my twenties or, worse, tomorrow's newborn, who will likely have a chip implanted up his ass letting everyone know where he is, what he's doing, and with whom.

But then I started wondering if that's also what my grandparents thought about the world they saw me born into. Maybe in a few decades the idea of privacy will be as quaint as the idea of hayrides. Everyone will just get used to the idea of having everyone know what you're up to. It seems to work pretty well for ants.

I'm not ready to go gentle into that good night just yet, although I can't quite figure out exactly where my rage should be directed for maximum effect. What puzzles me is the seeming lack of public debate on the issue of privacy, especially since the so-called Patriot Act. (That very name gives me the jitters. )

Maybe some big company will figure out how to make a buck off of selling privacy, and we'll start hearing more about it from them. But right now, they're all making their fortunes from collecting information; and the more they collect, the more they make.

I don't see anyone in government taking on the issue. The bureaucrats are collecting everything they can get their hands on. You can't even find out what the National Security Agency's budget is. I don't see a privacy champion among the politicians either and I think the Supreme Court ruling on corporate campaign contributions makes it a bit less likely that one will emerge any time soon.

The Europeans seem to be ahead of us on this issue, although what they will do with that lead remains to be seen.

More questions than answers for me right now. I think this may be the year I send a little something to the ACLU or the EFF. Cash in an unmarked envelope though. I don't want to show up on their mailing lists.