Google Hangouts upgrade removes ability to place or receive Google Voice calls from within Gmail

Google Hangouts upgrade removes ability to host Google Voice calls on your computer | The Verge: "if you upgrade the Google Talk service within Gmail to Hangouts (by selecting the "Try the new Hangouts" option in Talk's menu), you lose some significant features — namely the ability to set your availability status and, more importantly, the ability to place or receive Google Voice calls from within Gmail. Essentially, the new Hangouts removes the option to host a Google Voice call on your computer, something that many users find convenient and necessary in their day to day workflow."

Bottom line for Gmail users of Google Talk--you may not want to upgrade!


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Google Apps platform better and better

This company went Gmail because it's "cool" -- then discovered a surprising thing | CITEworld: "Where Schechtman's days used to be filled with worrying about having enough Exchange servers - and enough backup and disaster recovery capability to support them - for the growing company, he says Google makes it all easy enough to scale and add users that he has a lot more time to focus on projects outside of mere e-mail management. For instance, Quixote now uses Google Single Sign-On (SSO) to integrate identity across the company's Active Directory (AD) domain and Google Apps, and there are nascent plans to turn Google+ into the company's social intranet. Schechtman also praised Google's continual refinement and maturation of the Google Apps platform, finding that the stream of updates and tweaks to the platform are always for the better. "One of the great things about Google is that as we grow, Google is keeping up with us,"  Schechtman says."


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Google+ Everything Else

It's a Google World!

The Google+ Long Game Is Brilliant: ". . . I live in Gmail. Suddenly, I found this magical thing called Circles to be useful. When I get behind on my email, I simply go through a few of the circles (Foundry, Foundry Ents) and clear the email from my partners, my assistant Kelly, and the CEOs I work with. I have persistent chat up – I find that 80% of my chats now go through Gchat (the other 20% are Skype, and they are almost always requested by someone else.) And now that there are Hangouts integrated, many of these are videos. Google Voice is my Phone Number. I used to have desktop phones. I don’t anymore – I have a Google voice # and an iPhone. I give everyone my Google voice #. It works everywhere. I never think about what phone I’m using anymore. And I do many calls via the computer. Google Hangouts is my new Calendar Invite. I hate the telephone. Hate hate hate. But I don’t mind chat. And I don’t mind a Google Hangout / video call. All of a sudden I can make invites from Google Calendar that are Hangout invites. Done – every phone call / conference call is now a Hangout. I live in Chrome. . . All of a sudden I’ve got Communities. I’ve got Events. I’ve got Pages. And Hangouts, and Circles integrats seamlessly with each of these things. And they are nicely integrated with Gmail and Calendar. And suddenly I can do On Air Hangouts. And, I can record them automatically and save them to my Youtube channel. . . . "

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