Thought I’d quick post a few thoughts now that I’ve been using Google Voice for a couple weeks and have had a chance to get my hands dirty.

The basic functionality alone makes Google Voice totally worth using. Being able to have 1 number to give to friends, family, or co-workers and have that single number ring all your phones depending on different schedules is pretty much priceless. That, combined with unified voicemail that is also available online and is even transcribed has been amazing for me. But as I’ve used and explored Google Voice a bit deeper, I realize there’s a pretty good slew of features that I hadn’t even tried out.

Recording Calls.
Apparently you can press “4” to start/stop recording any phone call. These recordings are then saved and accessible via the web. This is something I haven’t really done too much with as of yet, but its nice to know that feature is available. The possibilities are endless here. My inner child longs to make prank calls using Arnold quotes and post them online for everyone. Just kidding! But seriously callers beware I may record your call and publish it. 😉

Transferring Calls.
While on a phone call via Google Voice, you simply have to press the * key. This keypress will then begin ringing all other phones that you’ve registered with Google Voice. This functionality I have used: Walking into my house while on my cell phone; I hit the * key and picked up my home phone which immediately began to ring. Nice, simple, easy functionality that allows you to switch phones without the person on the other end even having a clue that it happened.

VoiceMail ListenIn.
If you happen to just miss a call or send it to voicemail – Your GoogleVoice allows you to eavesdrop on the person currently leaving you a message. Even better, if you like what they’re saying you can press * to override the voicemail and pick the call back up. This one isn’t something I see myself doing very often, but it’s good to know that it’s there, and is a pretty cool added benefit.

Those are the main things I’ve found recently that were pleasant surprises. Overall, it seems like Google is constantly molding this service to do more with communications in general. Even in the beta stage it’s been a very solid product that I have really enjoyed having.

For about 3 years, I’ve lived totally without a “Land line” phone and used only a mobile phone.

At the same time, carrying two cell phones around was always a pain so I decided to cancel my “personal” cell phone and use only my employer provided blackberry. I recently got lucky enough (after weeks and weeks of pestering anyone I could find) to get an invite to Google voice, and that service has given me a completely new way of looking at phone service. I have been waiting for this forever.

Here’s what I’ve done this week:

1: Skype Unlimited Calling Subscription.
An unlimited US/Canada calling plan from Skype is about 34 dollars a year (2.79 / month). This unlimited calling plan allows me to call any phone in the continental US and Canada and talk as long as I want. For 2.79 a month, you just can’t beat that.

2: Skype Online Number.
When I signed up for an unlimited calling subscription, I got a discount on signing up for a Skype phone number at a 50% off. Subscribing to an online number is usually 60 bucks a month; but since I signed up for unlimited calling it was only 30 dollars for a 12 month subscription. This brings the TOTAL cost of Skype for a year of unlimited service with a callable phone number to about $64.

3: A Landline Phone VoIP Gateway USB adapter.
I ordered a Skype VoIP gateway which I will connect to my home server computer via USB. This product’s only (and very minimal, IMO) downside is that it must be connected to a PC in order to work. This adapter allows you to make and receive Skype calls from your normal phone handset. Plug in your standard cordless phone receiver with a couple satellite handsets, and you’ve got a pretty solid home phone that converts to VoIP using your Skype account. This product was 27 dollars and about 5 dollars shipping for a cost of $32.

4: Tie the Room Together with Google Voice.
Using Google Voice, I’ve set up a primary number that I use to forward to my Mobile phone and also my Skype number. So, anytime somebody calls me I have the option to answer it on my actual cell phone, on my computer with Skype’s soft client, or on a normal cordless phone handset hooked up through the VoIP gateway adapter.

I’m not a person that likes to spend hours on the phone, but at the same time I feel good about giving my employer a break and not using my work cell for 100% of my personal phone calls. And really, I feel like this setup is pretty “bad ass” from a techie perspective.

To give some perspective, here are the base prices for some other VoIP solutions:

Vonage: 24.99 / month
Charter Home Voice: 29.99 / month
Comcast “Digital Voice”: 24.95 / month

My setup, although a little more hands-on to set up, is VASTLY cheaper than these other options – and provides a unified voicemail that I can access online, amazing call forwarding features through Google voice, number blocking, call screening, and pretty awesome flexibility to make calls from cell/normal phone/computers running Skype.

With a setup that I like more than Vonage, Comcast, or Charter – my total cost per month for the first year of service will be about $8.05 per month. ($30 Skype number + $33 VoIP Gateway + 33.60 annual Skype subscription for Unlimited calls / 12 Months) And that number will go down significantly next year without having to purchase another gateway device adapter.

Google Voice is seriously changing the game, and I have officially jumped in.

Ever since Google Browser Sync was ceased; I’ve been looking for a better way to have a unified browser experience.

I have 4 different computers at home, and three different computers at work. Sometimes I use Internet Explorer, sometimes Firefox, sometimes Firefox in Linux.

With all these computers and all these browsers, keeping my bookmarks synced has always been a pain. I tried Microsoft’s sync toy, I tried Google bookmarks, I tried not using bookmarks at all…

When “Foxmarks” debuted a new version for Internet explorer, my browsing world came together. They’ve since changed the name to Xmarks, but really it’s the tool of the year in my opinion. I created two accounts; one for home and one for work – so my bookmarks are seamlessly synchronized between platforms and browsers without me even thinking about it. It’s even intelligent enough to map Firefox’s bookmarks toolbar to Internet Explorer’s Links toolbar, which is good considering that’s where most of my bookmarks are.

I’ve been hoping for a tool like this for a long time… and Xmarks does not disappoint.

Log management in an IT infrastructure is always going to be a challenge…

I’ve attempted to work with several “Enterprise” tools including GFI’s Languard, LogLogic, EventTracker, and a few more that aren’t even worth mentioning.

No matter the tool, the story is always the same: It’s a pain to work with logs, and a “pretty” interface and some neat looking graphs don’t offer that much benefit. Adding onto this general problem is the time and effort it takes to manage and maintain a log management solution. Some may even make the argument that it could be faster to manually review logs in some cases. Making a long story short – Log management sucks.

Which brings me to a solution that completely negates the first part of this post. It makes log management quick, easy, and even a little bit fun. Better yet, it’s completely free!

If you want to have a solid, scalable, and reliable log management solution in LITERALLY 10 minutes, then follow these steps.

1: Download Splunk.
Splunk is an awesome product. Plain and simple. It will index log data from almost anything you can throw at it. It can take syslogs, application logs, Windows event logs, and even straight up files/directories. Whether you have a Windows server, a Unix/Linux server, or even a Windows XP workstation laying around (with decent specs) then you can install Splunk in just a couple minutes. It’s painfully simple to install and get set up with an initial and default configuration. The only thing to configure before moving on to step 2 below is to make sure you have port 514 defined as a datasource on both TCP and UDP. This will allow your Splunk server to index log data we’re going to throw at it. Note that Splunk does have both a free version and a enterprise version which costs money. The free version is adequate for most small/medium deployments as it can index up to 500 megs daily. The enterprise version is definitely not a waste of money though if you’re looking at a large deployment.

2: Download Lasso Server.
LogLogic has released a very powerful tool for log collection. This tool is designed to run on a Windows Server or XP/Vista workstation, and it makes it VERY simple to gather log data from multiple Windows Server systems. The install takes only seconds: just add your log destination (read: Splunk server you just set up), and then add your Windows server hosts that you want to collect logs from. The Lasso service takes care of the rest. It will poll all your Windows servers, grab the event logs from them via WMI calls, convert those logs into syslog format, and then send them off to your Splunk server on TCP port 514. Splunk takes care of the rest by indexing all that log data and making it usable, searchable, and actionable. Note that If you’re running mostly Unix/Linux servers, then you don’t need a tool like Lasso to collect your logs. Just set them up to forward their own syslog data to your Splunk server directly.

3: Tuning.
By default, Splunk provides an easy to use search interface for you to easily find and locate log data. Depending on your needs, you may want to spend some time tuning Splunk to do scheduled searches, send emails if it finds certain results, outline custom search queries for specific messages, etc. Splunk is a very flexible tool that can be scaled to meet the needs of even large enterprise organizations. It can do all kinds of cool things if you want, but even the simple fact of having a log repository that you can search if/when you need to is priceless.

This combination of tools gives system administrators a quick and simple way to tackle the task of log management. And really, there’s no downside. It’s free (assuming you have access to some decent hardware to run it on), it’s easy, but most of all it’s very powerful. My thanks to Splunk and LogLogic for providing these tools to the community. It’s good to know that there’s companies out there making solid products and standing behind them.