City Life in a Black Hole (for Wireless Voice services)

sprint.jpgIf you follow me on столовеTwitter, you know that I do have opinions. When appropriate I’ll post long-form rants on LAist. My latest is about how pathetic it is that I can’t make a wireless voice call from my house no matter what the carrier is. And it’s been that way since I moved here four years ago!

Oh yeah, the data coverage is fine. I’ve been spoiled by AT&T’s 3g data coverage since 2006 and never turned back. Did it bother me to only have nine keys and #0* on my LG CU500 and a small screen? No. It was 3g. Did I at least use T9 predictive text or would I actually make 10 entries on the keypad just to spell “s-h-i-t?” Hell no, I became the fastest texter in town. Why? Because no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t hear more than scratchy sounds and broken words coming from the other end of the handset. Didn’t matter where or how I stood in the house or on the block. I was in a black hole. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile. You can’t NOT lose. It’s 2010, and I still find myself going to the mall just so I can have a coherent phone conversation with Mom.

Read the full article at LAist.

GrandCentral to Become Google Voice. Finally!

google voice not quite ready yetAs a lucky (or just crazy) early adopter who snapped up a Grand Central number, I’ve been waiting a couple years for Google to finally do enhance the service. I did notice last week that the GrandCentral Facebook App had gone blank.

Tonight, Google Voice was announced, but still — I can only log in the old-school GrandCentral way. The screenshots and features are awesome. And they’re even talking voice mail transcription. But again I must ask — when can I REALLY have my Google Voice?!? Supposedly at some point today [Thursday] according to Barron‘s and others.

GrandCentral finally to change to google voice

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