For a while now us iPhone users and users of phones on platforms like Windows Mobile have had the ability to have their Google contacts and calendars pushed to their mobile devices. However, up until now Gmail has been missing this feature. But not any more!
Google, through their Sync feature have enabled essentially an Exchange service for Gmail. This means that if set up properly on your iPhone you can get your email pushed to and from your phone just as if it was a mobile me account! Great news. I set this up today and gave it a bit of a test. To test this I would essentially send myself an email (lame I know) but within minutes my phone would buzz and a badge would show up on my mail icon to say that I had new mail!
For me this is just one more reason to set up a gmail account as an alternative to paying for a service like mobile me or dealing with ISP’s to set up your email. It really is a pretty easy set up process and the google website gives nice easy and clear directions. If you wan’t to set this up on your phone check out the Google Sync page here.
I was reading an article in the The Chronicle while I was at work the other day, it was talking about how Telstra has been slowly removing phone booth’s around the city and it got me thinking, will phone booths and landline phones become a thing of the past?
This article talked about how there are still some people who use the phone booths around the city, for example if they have a pre-paid phone and don’t have any credit, but really my guess would be that the vast majority of the population now owns a mobile phone of some sort or another. They have become so cheap to buy and such a convenient thing to carry around enabling us to be constantly contactable.
But what about the humble old landline telephone that sits at home connected to that outlet in the wall? I have a sneaking suspicion that as the internet becomes faster and more widely available, and as mobile phones and the plans they come on continue to become more affordable, that the good old telephone is going to become less needed. I think that as GEN Y and younger generations become more prominent in society phone companies will see a vast drop in the number of homes connected with the traditional means.
I for one can’t even remember the last time I used the home phone to make a call, I just pick up my mobile and use that instead – the calls are all included under my cap plan so why not? The only reason we actually have a phone connected is to have access to the internet. But even with that ISP’s are readily releasing broadband plans which don’t require a home phone to be connected at all, and with the governments broadband plan to deliver fiber to the home – we won’t need the good old copper wires at all!?!?!
My belief is that we are going to become so connected through the internet that we will be making all of our calls at home through VOIP services like Skype, therefore doing away with the need of a traditional copper phone line. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment!
