With the highly anticipated (at least by me) switchover of Grandcentral to Google’s infrastructure, they cleared up one dealbreaker that stopped me from using it regularly: Call Presentation. This feature announces each incoming call after you pick up, and gave you some options before you can actually start talking. Not cool.

Now that I can turn Call Presentation off, I’ve taken the first step integrating it into my life. Though I’m not ready to start giving out my Google Voice number to everyone, it can still solve a pretty annoying problem without anyone using its number directly.

When I’m home, my iPhone stays connected to my PC in my office on the second floor. I don’t carry it around the house with me. When I’m in this situation, I want calls to my iPhone to be forwarded to my home phone, and/or in some cases, my Gizmo SIP number running on my Nokia tablet.

Let’s start with the forwarding part. The iPhone itself can only turn forwarding on or off completely. I don’t want to have to manage this setting manually, and from my research, there really aren’t any reliable apps that will do forwarding automatically based on location. Luckily, there are manual codes for AT&T that can do some selective forwarding. Sorry international readers, you’ll have to look them up for your own carrier. I found them on some forum site (linked above), but I’m reprinting them here. Note that [dest] is the number you want to forward to (eg +12025551234) and [sec] is the number of seconds to let the phone ring before forwarding (in the no answer case). [sec] can range from 5-30 in 5 second increments.

Forward All:
Activate: *21*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #21*11#
Re-establish: *21*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##21*11#
Status: *#21*11#

If Busy:
Activate: *67*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #67*11#
Re-establish: *67*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##67*11#
Status: *#67*11#

if no answer:
Activate: *61*[dest]*11*[sec]#
Cancel & Retain: #61*11#
Re-establish: *61*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##61*11#
Status: *#61*11#

If Unreachable:
Activate: *62*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #62*11#
Re-establish: *62*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##62*11#
Status: *#62*11#

While testing, I found that the activate code works as expected (15 seconds seems about right for me), and the Cancel & Retain codes brought it right back to using the iPhone visual voicemail.

If you want to ignore the whole Google Voice thing, you can just use this to forward calls selectively to any number. You can stop reading now and go play.

However for me, I spend some time away from home for work, and forwarding consistently to the home phone doesn’t work in those cases. Sometimes I want to stop forwarding and have calls go to my mobile, or forward to Gizmo on my laptop. This is where I use Google Voice to easily switch it up.

Google Voice allows a quick switch between any phones you have configured with it. Through their web interface, I can set it to my iPhone or Gizmo while I’m away. So I don’t have to remember any forwarding codes. Plus I get web-based voicemail and email transcription through Google Voice.

So there you have it. A very handy way to use Google Voice without giving anyone the number. Plus a great way to stop having to chase down your iPhone (or any other phone on AT&T!) when it rings.

Testing to see if I publish a post via the Wordpress iPhone app, if the Twitter Updater Wordpress plugin will send a tweet about it.

Update: No – boo. Looks like it has to be from the web UI.

After using it as my desktop/laptop/mobile bookmark syncing service of choice, I’ve officially ditched Del.icio.us..

For a while, it was the only game in town. With its decent Firefox plugin, I could bookmark and sync between machines easily. In addition, I could create mobile landing pages that would have only the bookmarks I wanted for my devices. Finally, the Bookmarks application for iPhone gave me a nice native UI for all my bookmarks. Easy as pie.

But the whole damn thing is just way too socially-focused and tag-heavy for me. I keep very little bookmarks. My personal notes and pages to remember go in Evernote (which has its own problems, but I’m hoping for the best). So I don’t need to tag every damn thing. Their concept of collections (or whatever they called it) just added complexity and didn’t have a good analog in the browser plugin.

So here I am at Foxmarks (or XMarks, or whatever they’re calling it now). Better browser syncing with more browser support, password syncing, and an iPhone-optimized web UI that works as well if not better than the Del.icio.us bookmarks app.

Social linking. Yeah I’m a little biased since it’s my company, but AddThis is where it’s at if you want to share links. Nonetheless, I don’t share links often, and I certainly don’t need it in my basic bookmark syncing utility.