Author: Allen Lew

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Talkatone: The Missing Piece of the Google Voice App

TalkatoneGoogle Voice is a very useful service by Google, adding features to your phone like voicemail transcription, call recording, and call blocking. Strangely missing from Google Voice’s main features is the most important part of the telephone: making calls. In order to do that, you have to use your regular phone or use Gmail’s calling service. However, there’s an app that allows you to use that Gmail calling service and use it on your iOS and Android device to make calls: Talkatone. Now instead of using your phone minutes (or if your device doesn’t even have a cellular connection), you can use the app to make calls over wi-fi or 3G. It’s very handy if you say lose a phone or are running low on minutes and need to make a call. The app even came in handy when I was in Japan and needed to make a free call to the United States (probably routed my call through the us servers, but your mileage may vary).

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Programming People to Program


The “What most schools don’t teach” video on Youtube has gone viral fairly quickly, having amassed 8,711,609 views (as of Monday, March 4 at 12:34 AM). Anecdotally, I’ve seen it shared on Facebook by programmer and non programmer alike,and influence a few people to take up learning how to code in their spare time. Featuring a diverse cast of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Chris Bosh to name a few, it seems to make a compelling case for getting people interested in programming.

While I fully endorse the message, it however made me think of another person who asked us all to learn programming: Doug Rushkoff. He is the author of the book Program or Be Programmed, and frequent speaker on how important it is to learn coding in the 21st Century. Yet, I’ve heard of only 1 person who was inspired to program from Rushkoff’s message even though it’s been around much longer:

This got me thinking about why saying things one way resonates with us and why it saying it another does not. Code.org’s mission is more optimistic in tone, and features celebrities and people from industry espousing what is great about programming. Rushkoff, however, seems more pessimistic and anti-industry, revealing the hidden subroutines of the code we use everyday. Both methods carry the same message and yet the more optimistic video seems to be the one that is clearly winning people over to learning to program. It doesn’t mean Rushkoff’s message is any less important, but it reminds us that perhaps a hopeful message gets through better than a scary one.