Armando’s Posterous

One of the sticking points with the otherwise highly convenient Google Voice service has been that you had a choose a new number to use with the service. If you had an existing number that everyone already knew and wanted to switch over, you were pretty much out of luck.

Luckily that changes today, with tonight’s Google announcement that you can now use Google Voice with an existing phone number. Also notably, you can now add Google voicemail service to any of the mobile numbers linked to your account. Think of it a bit like Gmail for voicemail.

Now when you first sign up for Google Voice you can choose between using your own number or choosing a new Google number. You still get many of Google Voice’s features when using your own number, including the Google voicemail feature you can now add to linked phones.

Unfortunately it’s not a full number port, and you won’t get all of the Google Voice features when using your own number — at least not yet. But especially if you have an older phone that doesn’t already have a nice visual voicemail interface, the Google voicemail feature alone might be reason enough to switch. The company also says it plans to roll out a full service compatible with your existing number, including other great features of Voice like conference calling, call screening, and listening into calls before deciding to pick up.

Check out the video about how Google voicemail works below. And if you’re still hunting for an invite to Google Voice, you can ask a friend for one.

Do you use Google Voice? If not, will you consider using the service now that you can keep your existing number? Let us know in the comments.

Apple’s “I’m a PC” and “I’m a Mac” dynamic ad duo are at it again in three new “Get a Mac” commercials that take direct aim at today’s Windows 7 launch.

In “Broken Promises,” PC Guy flashes back to Windows editions over the years (with fashion or lack thereof to match), each promising not to have “any of the problems my last operating system had.” The ad ends with the line “this time it’s gonna be different. Trust me.” Ouch, Apple!

Check out the aforementioned ad embedded below, and the other two ads over at Apple. The latter pair both feature Windows users eagerly getting ready to make the switch — not to Windows 7, but to a Mac.

What do you think, are the ads effective, or has Apple gone too far with this one?

[Thanks, Erictric]

Tags: ads, apple, mac, MARKETING, Windows 7

Google has just opened the gates to a public preview of Google Wave to a lucky 100,000 users. This is big news for developers as anticipation for the release of invites continued to build up over the last few days. Google Wave is still trending in Twitter.

For the last several months, thousands of developers (out of 1,000,000 or so who signed up for access) have had access to a private “developer preview” of Google Wave in a sandbox environment. If you’re one of the lucky developers that got access to the early preview, you’re likely already in the know about the platform’s capabilities and its API (our Google Wave API Profile).

Ostensibly, the new user base that has been added to Google Wave represents a great opportunity for developers to expand the reach of their extensions (including robots and gadgets) as well as the wave embed API. A variety of extensions have already been developed, ranging from basic games to outright enterprise modules that integrate nicely with Google Wave. It would seem that momentum will continue to build as a broader audience gains access to these extensions through the Google Wave Client.

If you haven’t come up to speed with the latest additions to the API, it’s worthwhile noting that the Google Wave team has posted a set of Extension Design Principles as well as a new way of bundling extensions through Extension Installers. Extension installers include a manifest that provides meta information and instructions for the addition of a robot or gadget to a wave.

If you’re not one of the next 100,000 preview users, you can always hope that a friend received an invite. Apparently the initial batch of users will be able to “nominate” 8 other users for invites (however, those other users will not have the ability to nominate others). If you do the math, you realize that the public preview will have a broader reach than expected. Here’s hoping you receive an invite, and happy waving.

Update: The CNN iPhone App is now in the app store. Download it here [iTunes link].
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A little over a month ago, we reviewed the NPR News iPhone App. We raved about its radio integration and personalization options, so much that we definitively declared that “NPR’s iPhone app blows other news apps out of the water.”

We may have spoken too soon, because that declaration was before the CNN iPhone App.

The CNN iPhone App, which is now live in the app store [iTunes link], is nothing short of impressive. It combines breaking news with customization, the ability to save stories, streaming video whenever breaking news is in progress, and most intriguing of all, citizen journalism.

CNN’s iPhone App: It’s Impressive

The CNN iPhone app is divided into four key (but very different) components, combining for one seamless app experience. Here’s what you can expect if you download the $1.99 app:

Headlines: It’s the core of any news app – being able to read breaking news. You can sift through news by recency and by category (crime, politics, health, etc). And since it’s CNN, you can also share stories via Facebook Connect, Twitter, SMS, and email.

Oh, one more cool thing about headlines: if you turn your iPhone on the side, you can view stories like you can your iPod album covers. Flick through images to find the story that interests you. It’s a uniquely visual way to consume news.

My CNN: The app is chock-full of personalization options. Our favorite is the ability to “save” stories you want to read later. You don’t even need a connection to read saved stories, so you pick out the news you want and read it on the plane without a problem.

Another nifty feature: you can “follow” topics or stories that interest you and get alerts when there are updates to that story.

Video: Yeah, this app gets even better. It is CNN we’re talking about, so you’d hope there would be some video. You can watch on-demand clips related to breaking news. However, we’re huge fans of the live streaming video integration. Anytime there’s a breaking event (Obama gives a speech, a major natural disaster, election night, etc.), live coverage from CNN Live becomes available. Hell, this is a feature that I’d purchase as a standalone app itself.

iReport: Out of all of the CNN iPhone App’s features, this one may be the most game-changing. iReport is CNN’s user-generated citizen journalism initiative, where everyday citizens can upload photos, videos, and stories about events happening near them. Some of it is even used on CNN’s news coverage.

Guess what? The app lets you submit photos and videos you take with your iPhone to iReport and to CNN. Can you imagine how much citizen journalism this app will encourage?

To say we’re impressed with this app is an understatement. CNN went all-out with features and functionality, but did it in a way that’s simple and easy to use and consume. The app sets a new standard in functionality and even has the potential to change the news game with its iReport integration. It’s the complete package.

Tags: cnn, iphone, iphone app, News

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of putting together a website or social media campaign is the copy. Many people assume that the same words that work for print campaigns or materials can just be copied and pasted for the web, but that’s just not true. The web is an entirely different medium, and copy needs to be treated with the same respect that design and user interface elements get.

Text is a very important part of user experience on the web, so it needs and deserves the same sort of design consideration. You must make your text usable in the same manner that you do the rest of your website or social media campaign materials. In short: text is user interface. Here are five rules for writing better for the web.

1. Know Your Objective

This actually applies to any sort of copywriting. Unless you have a clear picture of the end result, your writing won’t be as clear as it could be. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with each bit of text you write. Once you know the objective, you’ll be able to more clearly articulate what you need to get across to your customers in your copy, and you’ll be able to identify any superfluous text that you can throw out.

2. Know Your Audience

The web is unique as a marketing platform because it can be so hyper-targeted. You can theoretically know exactly who your audience is and target your writing accordingly. Further, depending on where you’re writing, your audience will be different. Any time your audience changes, you may need to make changes in your copy as well. Obviously writing for Twitter is different than writing for your blog, but writing for your blog is different than writing for email, which is different than writing for Facebook, which is different than writing for MySpace, and so on. Before you lay any words down on the page, figure out who you’re speaking to, and write with them in mind.

3. Keep it Short

Studies have found that the more words you add to a web page the less time people spend reading it. Attention spans are shorter on the web, so your writing will be more effective if it is also kept shorter. One study found that users only spend about 4.4 seconds on a page for every 100 words of content. When you factor in average reading speeds, that means users generally only read about 18% of the text on a page (perhaps less — since at least some portion of that 4.4 seconds is probably spent doing things other than reading page copy). That suggests that if you keep your copy as concise as possible, it will be more likely that your website visitors will actually read more of your text. Of course, you can adjust this rule based on your audience — some audiences might be more likely to read long articles than others.

4. Make it Scannable

Because only a portion of your text is actually likely to be read by your audience, it’s also important to write with scannability in mind. That means readers should be able to get the main gist of your copy even if they just scan it. When it comes to scannability, large blocks of text are your enemy. It is nearly impossible to quickly draw out the key points from a long paragraph, so when presented with one, many readers will just skip over it automatically. Make it easier for them to pull out the central topic points by using descriptive headers and sub-headers (like the ones in this article), bulleted lists, highlighting of key points, and images or diagrams, which can both break up the monotony of text and present the same information in a different way.

5. Embrace Constraints

Every platform has its own set of constraints when it comes to writing copy. The most obvious example right now is Twitter, which enforces a 140 character limit on every message you send, but every platform has limitations (for example, messages on Facebook can only have very limited formatting). These limits can be seen as a burden, or they can force you to think creatively about your content. If you only have 140 characters to work with, for example, you have to work extra hard to pack as much information as you can into each tweet while maintaining a voice consistent with your brand’s other copy.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned in J-School
- 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog
- Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post
- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business
- HOW TO: Leverage Twitter for Hiring

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tioloco, RapidEye

Tags: Lists, social media, web, writing