People have been telling me if I can survive November I can survive the rainy and grey climate of Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest in general.  This November must be an anomaly because while there has been a lot of rain there have been some spectacularly sunny days.  Yesterday was one of them and it was perfect for hiking and to get out and explore an area I haven’t seen yet: West Vancouver.

 

Coming from the topographically challenged Midwest, scenes like this put a huge smile on my face every time I see them.  

 

It was a perfect day for hiking but if I had a boat I’d have joined two kayakers I met.

 

Most of the day was spent hiking at the aptly, if uncreatively named, Lighthouse Park on Point Atkinson.  This will definitely be the place I’ll bring visitors.  It is easy to get to and the trails are nice and wide for people of all athletic abilities and the views can’t be beat.

 

There is a major street in Vancouver named Arbutus.  While many of the North-South streets are named after trees I didn’t realize Arbutus was a tree.  Common to the Pacific Northwest I’d never seen or touched one before.  It is ideal for burning because it burns long and hot.  Unfortunately I don’t have a fireplace but I’ll file it away until I do because they keep telling me how cold it is going to get.

 

After thoroughly exploring Lighthouse Park we continued on to Horseshoe Bay where many of the ferries leave and on to Whytecliff Park to take in the sunset which was a great way to end a beautiful day.

November 24th, 2008 | outdoors, photography | 1 comment

Grand Central is a service aiming to hide the complexities of modern communication behind a single phone number.  You request a number from Grand Central and via their web interface you choose your mobile, office, home or any other number ring when the caller dials your GC number.  Acquired by Google in mid-2007 the service hasn’t seen many updates and is still in a closed beta.  

 

One twelve year long chapter of my life ended and an exciting new one began when I moved from Chicago to Vancouver earlier this fall.  I’ve updated addresses and the most visible remaining Chicago vestige is the 773 area code on my mobile.  My initial hope was to get a Vancouver 778 or 604 number from Grand Central and have it route to my US phone.  Everyone in the states could continue to call the 773 number I’ve had for years and hopefully potential employers in Canada would be seamlessly routed through none the wiser that I was still fairly transient in Canada.  No dice — GC only allows you to reserve a number in a US area code. 

AT&T’s roaming rates in Canada would’ve killed this option eventually anyways.  The first cellular carrier to wise up and NAFTA-fy their calling plans to make it reasonable to use a mobile phone in both the US and Canada has a sizable market along the 49th parallel.

As I settled in to Vancouver the need for a local 778 number became more pressing so I eventually purchased an iPhone 3G on Rogers.  Reading my AT&T agreement I realized I could forward my US phone to my GC and while GC may not have Vancouver prefixes there is nothing stopping you from routing a GC number to a Vancouver prefix.  Now those potential employers really are calling a phone with a 778 number while friends and family in the States still call the 773 number and pay local rates.  Additionally, I avoid near criminal roaming charges and most importantly I only need to carry one phone.  Seems like a perfect solution.

Almost…

There are two gaps I’m still looking to fill:

1. Forwarding SMS messages: I still need to check my US phone daily for any text messages which were sent to it.  While I know SMS forwarding is available in Europe I haven’t found anything available for AT&T customers.  Perhaps there is an iPhone app I haven’t discovered (or one waiting to be written).
2. Retrieving voice mail: Part of the GC value proposition is unified communication which means a single voice mailbox.  When I don’t pick up a call which has been routed through GC it doesn’t ring into my Rogers voice mail but to my GC voice mail.  GC sends me a text message letting me know someone left a message but I can’t get to it from an iPhone unless I call to retrieve it which of course would be an international call back to the States at a ridiculous rate.  The GC web interface requires Flash, which doesn’t exist on the iPhone.  GC recently released a mobile site but the MP3 of the message doesn’t play in the iPhone Quicktime player.  Arghh!  So close…

I realize I’m using GC as a glorified (and free) forwarding system instead of the “One Number, One Voicemail Box” solution it is meant to be but has anyone else found a solution to either of these problems?
Maybe if I can find a way to get the MP3 out of Grand Central and to Jott I can get a transcription.  Although a cursory look at the Jott API doesn’t look sending MP3s for transcription is a part of the API.  As a bonus I wouldn’t have to sit through those VMs certain people leave which are two and three minutes long.
Finally, perhaps there’s hope this functionality will be developed as part of GC as it looks like it hasn’t been forgotten inside of Google with the recent release of Vocito and Google has taken quite an interest in iPhone apps recently.

November 20th, 2008 | technology | 2 comments