It’s been a long time coming, but Google just announced that Google Voice is now open for everyone. Until today, Google Voice was an invite-only service, though Google slowly opened up the doors to more users over the last few months and the service already has over one million users. Starting today, anybody with a Google Account in the U.S. can open a Google Voice account and get a Google Voice phone number without having to wait for an invitation. Sponsor Google Voice gives you a new phone number that can ring all of your landline and mobile phones simultaneously and provides automatic voicemail transcriptions. In addition, Google Voice offers free calls and text messages in the U.S. and Canada, as well as cheap international calls. The service is based on GrandCentral, a service that Google acquired in July 2007. Last November, Google also acquired Skype competitor Gizmo5, though the company hasn’t integrated any of Gizmo5’s functionality into Google Voice yet. In the long run, though, Google Voice could easily morph into a full-blown competitor to Skype. A number of other services, including the newly launched Phonebooth.com and Ribbit have launched Google Voice competitors with very similar features, though Google’s name recognition and ability to integrate this telephony service into its other products gives Google a competitive advantage. Our Favorite Features If you are not familiar with Google Voice, here are some of our favorite features: transcribed voicemails : whenever somebody leaves a voicemail, Google Voice will transcribe the message as best it can (this only works for English right now). These transcripts are then forwarded to your email account and you can also opt to receive an SMS notification. listening in to voicemails : whenever you receive a call and decide to let it go to voicemail, you can also choose to listen in and even pick up the call if it turns out to be an important message. This feels just like the old days when answering machines with tapes were still a novelty. call screening : one neat option in Google Voice is the ability to screen calls. If you activate this feature, callers will be prompted to leave their name once they call, and once you pick up the phone, Google Voice will play the name back and you can choose whether you want the call to go to voicemail or actually speak to this person. You can opt to let all unknown callers who are not in your Google address book go through this procedure or just those calls from callers who have blocked their caller ID. recording calls : at any time during a call, you can press 4 and the call will be recorded. This only works for calls you receive on your phone for now, and doesn’t work for outgoing calls. conference calls : just ask participants to call your Google Voice number and as more callers arrive, you can just conference them in – this works for up to 4 callers. switching phones : if you want to switch phones during a call (say you took a call on your landline and decide you want to take a walk and continue the call on your cell), just press * and all your other phones will ring again and you can continue the conversation on any othe rphone. SMS : you can send and receive text messages from your Google Voice account and web interface integration with Google Contacts it just works : the call quality is good, we didn’t experience any outages during the last few months, and calls aren’t dropped. Google Voice does what it says it does, and it does it well. Discuss

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Looking to save money on your wireless bill? Have the new iPhone? Maybe you should start making video calls instead. With this week’s launch of the new iPhone 4 and its accompanying software, the Apple smartphone now enables a video calling feature by way of a new application called “FaceTime.” And apparently, these videos calls, unlike their voice counterparts, are free. Sponsor Video Calls are Free, but Limited Video calls don’t count against your carrier allotment of minutes, an Apple representative confirms today. Even though video calls can be initiated from within a voice calling session, the voice call ends as soon as the video call begins. That means the calls made using FaceTime don’t use up your carrier minutes. But before you declare you’re going “video-only” from now on in order to save on minutes, you need to be aware of a few restrictions of the FaceTime software. For starters, the new application runs only on iPhone 4 devices. For households where one iPhone is upgraded while the other is handed down, FaceTime is a non-starter. Those two iPhone owners can’t video call one another because older iPhones can’t run the FaceTime application. Also of major importance is the fact that FaceTime is a Wi-Fi only application for now. In the U.S. at least, many will point fingers at AT&T’s much-criticized network, which likely isn’t able to handle the load of thousands of new video calling users coming online at the same time. However, these sorts of limitations may end up only being temporary. FaceTime’s Future During the iPhone 4 announcement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said FaceTime was Wi-Fi only in 2010 , but that the company was “working with the cellular providers” to get things ready for future use over cellular networks. Although the plural (“networks”) is used, that’s not necessarily an indication of the launch of the long-rumored, but never realized Verizon iPhone. Instead, it has more to do with the fact that FaceTime, to quote Jobs, is going to be made into an “open industry standard.” Whether or not Apple’s definition of “open” means, as many hope, “open source,” is still unclear. FaceTime’s currently supported technologies like H.264 for video and AAC for audio aren’t by definition open in the truest sense of the word. Neither are open source – rather, they are “open standards” with their patent holders retaining the rights to their use. Will the proposed FaceTime protocol itself follow this same path of open standards? Or will Apple really make it open? Our bets, given Apple’s history, are on the former, unfortunately. But regardless of these behind-the-scenes financial and technical details, making FaceTime available outside the Apple universe may be enough to allow it to gain momentum, especially given Apple’s clout in the smartphone industry. Other video calling applications and video conferencing solutions could end up utilizing the technology within their own applications going forward. But the real question is, even if the technology becomes ever-present in a multitude of devices, do people actually want to use it? Discuss

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Indie pop band OK Go debuted the music video for their song “End Love” this week. And I bet you’ve seen it already. Since its upload to YouTube on Tuesday, the video has had over 400,000 views. Arguably OK Go are the among the masters of the YouTube platform. Their famous 2006 treadmill video for “Here It Goes Again” clocks in with over 50 million views, making it one of YouTube’s most watched and most favorited videos. Certainly OK Go have been pioneering the ways in which artists can embrace new technologies – and use them to challenge the traditional parts of the record industry. And as pioneers, OK Go offer lessons for those outside the music business. Sponsor Clearly, the most obvious lesson that startups might take from OK Go is: make a viral video . But of course, that’s easier said than done. What becomes viral isn’t necessarily predictable (nor is it necessarily positive ). So here are some other things that startups can learn from OK Go: Focus on a Good Product, Not on Good Advertising. Despite it being the way in which most of their fans have been introduced to their music, OK Go do not see their videos as advertisements for their band. Rather, the band views the videos as artistic projects inextricable from the music, not simply promo pieces. And while the band is sometimes criticized for having videos that are more successful than their albums, lead singer Damien Kulash says in a New York Magazine

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A screencast is a quick way to indroduce a product or feature and to show customers how something works. Screencasts are a popular online instructional tool, allowing you to explain things in a way many users will find preferable to dense text and more helpful than screenshots alone. There are a number of tools available that make screencasting fairly simple, but here are some tips to help you along the way: Sponsor Choose the Right Tool There are lots of options for screencasting, both software downloads and browser-based tools, available both for purchase and for free. A few options include Camtasia , Jing , ScreenToaster , and ScreenFlow . Make sure that the tool you use will meet your specifications: Video: Will it record from a webcam or video camera? Audio: Can you add a voice track? Will it record the computer’s audio? Can you record the audio live? Editing: Will it handle multiple video and audio tracks? Does it have capabilities for transitions, zooming, and magnification? Output: Does it allow you to export the file into the format you need? Make a Script Plan what you want to show. Let me channel my inner English teacher here, and advise you to write a script for your screencast. Your script should contain not just what you plan to say, but the images that will accompany your voiceover. Make sure to think about the genre of your screencast: is it a tutorial? A demo? Doing so will help you craft the words and images into the best possible presentation. Capturing the Screencast Although you can capture your whole screen in a screencast, you only need to record the pertinent action. Jon Udell advises “presenters to size the application window (or windows) to something like 800 by 600. That’s partly to minimize the quantity of video that has to be delivered, which continues to matter because broadband isn’t yet where it needs to be. But equally, it’s a way to focus on the real action.” Depending on the tool you select, you might have to record everything – screen and voice – all in one uninterrupted take. Although there are different opinions on this, I’ve found it easiest to record and edit the video first, then record the voice second, so as to match the speed and transition of the videos. Think of the screencast in sections. You can record the video and the audio in chunks or chapters, which might make piecing things together in the editing room easier. Editing the Screencast Editing is arguably the most important step and the key to making a good screencast. Although you can capture lots of raw footage, you’ll want to whittle this down to a succinct presentation. A screen capture tool will capture every little detail: when you hesitated or wandered with your mouse, when you chose the wrong menu, when you had to resize or reorder screens. You should trim all of these unnecessary frames out. Your screencast should be informative and interesting, but brief. People are unlikely to sit through a 20 minute video (if you have that much information to convey, consider offering the video in chapters). Aim for a 3-5 minute product. As you edit your screencast, avoid the temptation to utilize all the fancy dissolves and swipes for your transitions. And be sure to check your work before you publish. It might take some time to master making a screencast, particularly if you’re using some of the more elaborate tools. But a screencast is a good way to easily explain your product or service, and so it might be worthwhile honing your scriptwriting and screencasting skills. Read here for more ReadWriteWeb coverage on screencasts. And below is an example from crowdSPRING , who also have a ” How To ” for screencasts on their blog. Discuss

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Google today announced that it has made video, voice and group chat easier to access from within Gmail. One change is the presence of an icon for the voice and video chat plugin . If the person you’re chatting with from within Gmail doesn’t have that plugin, you can one-click the icon to issue them an invitation. Sponsor Extant features such as “Go off the record,” “Block”, and “Send SMS” are available above the chat window. Unfortunately, these functions don’t seem to extend to the Gtalk client. Unlike Skype’s recent beta there is no group video chat. Discuss

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