Damien Mulley

News came out in the past few days that the Google Phone/GPhone was not afterall going to be a hardware device and that Google was working on something like a competitor to Windows Mobile. Told you so. 🙂 Anyways, with the Jaiku deal announced yesterday, I thought I’d re-examine the Google Mobile software suite that I think they’re developing and add in thoughts on recent acquisitions.

First GrandCentral. With the purchase of this company, it means Google can now offer a single number for your phone or even a different number per country so people can phone local numbers but connect to you no matter where you are on the planet. You are free to create rules for that number so at certain times of the day, only family can call and everyone else is diverted to your desk phone or to voicemail. Certain numbers you can just block forever. Blocked number rings in? Send them to the spammer voicemail. Client number ringing in? Send them to the business answering service. Will this be one of the features on the Google Mobile Operating System? It should be.

Now to Jaiku. Dave Winer said that Scoble rang him and said the Jaiku deal was not about Twitter but about Facebook. Bollox to both reasonings. The Jaiku purchase was not about Twitter or Facebook or the threat from either, Google is working on something else to combat Facebook. Jaiku, in my view will be integrated into this Google Mobile Operating System/Suite that I believe will be able to work on a whole slew of phones.

Jyri himself from Jaiku pointed out how Tim O’Reilly thinks that the mobile phone addressbook could itself be the killer app for Web 2.0. Jaiku already has software for Nokia phones that does this. You can see who on your addressbook is on Jaiku and you can see their status. This is what it looks like:

Now, imagine having a phone where all your contacts will also show a status (blank if they not using Google Mobile Services/GMail). Scenario: Ok, Jim is in a meeting right now, so I won’t bother calling. Fiona is also in the meeting but her status says she will reply to IMs, so you IM her from your phone. Change your own status to say you are in Denmark now, only important calls can be taken. Paul is on holidays so he says ring Jim. Julie is driving home, contact her after 5 instead. Gah. Notice how simple status messages are proving to be more and more important? This so reminds me of the inch speech in Any Given Sunday.

Jaiku is also perfect for saying where you are which can tie itself into the geotag information on Google maps. Tell Jaiku (or whatever it will be called with Google) where you are and it can tell you what are good places to eat nearby and it might even tell you if any business contacts are nearby.

Now for the Cubic phones. The key thing about them is that they have a sim card so sit on a normal mobile network but they also sit on a wifi network. Imagine the Google Mobile Operating system running on Cubic phones? Google is giving it away, so flash the Cubic phone to run it. You see your address book on your phone and a special icon next to those people who you can call totally for free and likewise they can see you are in a wifi zone so can call your from their PC or wireless device. Why do you need a €700 phone just for WiFi? The Cubic phone is cheap as chips, gives you WiFi and cheap roaming too and when on WiFi free calls to anyone on GTalk/GMail or on the Cubic service. Cubic already have deals with WiFi networks but imagine if Google, an investor in FON also said, “any phone with the Google Mobile OS can use FON for free calls and data”? And all without any lock-in with operators. I’m sure Google is hoping and praying that there’ll be lots more Cubic Telecoms in the not so distant future as they mess with the existing mobile cartels. I do too.

Using GMail to spam filter and virus clean your non Gmail email accounts (iol.ie, esatclear.ie, eircom.net etc) without changing email application.

As well as being a very good online email application, GMail is fantastic for filtering spam and warning you about viruses in your email. You can avail of this service even if you have an eircom.net or iol.ie or esatclear.ie account and still use Outlook or Eudora or whatever to check the mails. And all for free.

Google has allowed you to download GMail mails from your GMail account for years now and you can also forward emails from your own domain to your GMail address and use it to filter emails for spam as well as viruses. Handy out. Recently they’ve allowed Gmail users to access other email accounts and load them into your Gmail account and again filter the emails for all the crap they get these days. This is what I do for an esatclear.ie account that I’ve used for years and which gets 100s of spams and viruses a day.

I’ve been telling people recently about how this is possible and after looking around for a guide online, I can’t find anything apart from the old ones that say “forward your address and then download to Outlook”. I told a good few people I’d write them instructions on how to do this, so here’s a quick guide:

I. Sign up for a GMail account.
II. Set up your eircom.net or IOL.ie account so GMail downloads email from it.
III. Set up GMail to allow you to download mails from it.
IV. Set up Outlook or Thunderbird or Eudora to download mail from GMail

I. Sign up for a GMail account.

Go to www.GMail.com and sign up. Remember the email address and the password.

II. Set up your eircom.net or IOL.ie account so GMail downloads email from it.

1. Click Settings from the top of any email page.
   
2. In the Settings list, Click the Accounts tab.
   
3. In the Get mail from other accounts section, click Add another mail account.
   
4. Enter the full email address of the account you want GMail to access, then click Next Step.
5. Gmail will populate the Username and POP Server fields, based on your email address. Enter your Password.
6. The next screen will give you a few options. Choose what you want but I’d leave them all alone.
   
7. Click Add Account and that’s your eircom.net or iol.ie account being accessed by Gmail.

Now that GMail is checking your email and filtering it for spam and viruses, you will need to download that email from GMail.

III. Set up GMail to allow you to download mails from it.

This bit is easy enough.

1. Click Settings from the top of any email page.
   
2. Choose the Forwarding and POP tab.
   
3. Click the “Enable POP for all mail” option.
   

Next up is changing the settings in your existing mail client to download mail from GMail and not from the existing account as that would be futile, now wouldn’t it?

IV. Set up Outlook or Thunderbird or Eudora to download mail from GMail

The gist of this is that you should change your username and password in your mail account to be the new one you created with GMail and change the server details in your client to the settings for GMail. Google has a very comprehensive guide for most mail clients and you should check the settings against that.

Basically under POP3 settings in your mail program you need to change the server to: pop.gmail.com and change the port number to 995 and specify that your server requires a secure connection (SSL).
For SMTP or outgoing mail you need to change your server to smtp.gmail.com, change the port number to 465 and again specify that your server requires a secure connection (SSL).

Don’t forget to still use the existing email address for your reply to and from etc.