Got an iPhone and hate how difficult it is to place Google Voice calls now that Apple has removed all the dialer apps from the App Store? Check out this “simple” howto:

This is a more thorough explanation of a previous post. In lieu of an GV app, I figured out a quick and easy way to dial your most frequent contacts using no more than 2 clicks. All we’re doing is adding a bookmark to your iPhone home page that links to a contact’s unique URL in your GV address book. Ready?

1. Load up the mobile GV site (https://www.google.com/voice/m). It works fine in Firefox — it doesn’t redirect to the non-mobile version like other Google sites.

2. Find your desired favorite in your contact list. Let’s use “Mom” for our example. Each contact has its own unique URL – something like https://www.google.com/voice/m/contact/793238491687864. Copy this link to your clipboard.

3. Use your favorite photo editing software to find the perfect headshot of mom. Crop it so it’s EXACTLY a square (I use Picasa).

4. Resize mom’s picture so it’s 57 × 57, and save as a PNG to your desktop. (I used http://www.resize2mail.com/advanced.php)

5. Fire up http://webclipicons.info/ Upload your 57 × 57 PNG, give it the shortcut name “mom” and paste the GV unique contact URL from step 2 into the “shortcut URL” prompt. Put in your email address, and uncheck “make public.” Hit “create shortcut.”

6. Check your iPhone email. You should receive a message with link — click on it. Safari should launch. Bookmark that page to your home screen. Your mom’s smiling face should appear along with your fart and other useless apps.

7. When it’s time to call mom, click on her face. Her contact page in your GV account will load in Safari. You can then call or SMS any number that you have stored for her.

While I’ve made some round-about howtos for accomplishing time-saving things, this one made me laugh out loud. That’s a helluva lot of work for initiating a call.

A much BETTER solution can be accomplished in just 3 steps:

1) tell Apple to go screw themselves

2) jailbreak your iPhone

3) install GV Mobile from Cydia (Cydia is like AppStore for non-AppStore apps.)

That’s a little bit of work — but you’ll only need to do it once. I guarantee you’ll like your iPhone a lot more when you do.

Remember me saying that I didn’t think we’d be seeing an official Google Voice dialer app for iPhone? Looks like I was right.

Today Apple yanked all the Google Voice dialer apps out of the App Store.

Now there’s no official or unofficial Google Voice dialers. Nice one, Apple.

While it’s still possible that an official Google client may turn up at some point, it’s not looking promising; Apple says that the reason they pulled the apps is that they ‘duplicate functionality already found in iPhone,’ namely ‘dialing.’ When Google submits their official app, it will also be ‘dialing’; consistency says that’ll be rejected as well.

Lucky for us, consistency is not high on Apple’s list of things to worry about. You may remember from the other day when they said they rejected Google’s Latitude app because they thought another app that draws maps would be ‘confusing.’ Yet the market is still chock full of GPS/mapping apps. Apps that, as far as I know, nobody’s ever been confused about.

It’s pretty clear that Apple doesn’t want any more Google present on its iPhone platform than there already is. If you want some more, you’re going to have to pick one of the many other platforms that doesn’t reject innovative apps.

UPDATE: Sean Kovacs, author of GV Mobile, one of the “unofficial” Google Voice apps which Apple pulled from their market, is now available via Cydia if your iPhone is jailbroken. Compelling enough reason to finally jailbreak?

For weeks now, there’ve been a number people on Twitter and blogs expressing disappointment with Google over leaving out iPhone when it comes to many of their key properties. One such article, by social media rockstar Wayne Sutton, does a pretty good job of summing up the feelings of many in the iPhone community, but unfortunately, manages to completely get the wrong end of the stick. He seems to be under the impression that Google just doesn’t feel like putting out apps for iPhone, forgetting that it’s Apple themselves who are both the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper when it comes to what iPhone users get to run on their handsets.

Meanwhile, just yesterday Google “finally got around to” — if you listen to the chatter on the Internet, anyway — releasing their Latitude for iPhone app — which is actually not a native app at all, but instead a web app that runs in Safari — along with a lengthy article on their mobile blog which makes it crystal clear that it’s Apple with whom we should be disappointed, not them.

We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.

I’ve been saying all along that it was Apple’s 3-month+ wait approval queue, and/or the nature of Maps.app as a “core” app (that can only be updated via a firmware update) that’s the holdup, but it never occurred to me that Apple wouldn’t want Latitude on iPhone at all, which seems plainly clear now.

The brewing speculation suggests that Apple’s $99-a-year MobileMe service, which has some location aspects to it now, is going to be expanding to more directly compete with Latitude, Loopt, and other such social/location apps, and thus doesn’t want the early — not to mention free — competition from Google. This is purely speculation, but it’s based on the past times that Apple has rejected iPhone apps with features that they themselves were planning to implement, so I’m going to place my bets squarely on that being truth. We’ll have to wait and see.

This rejection now makes it pretty clear that the other native Google apps that people like Wayne are eagerly awaiting are simply never going to come. Sorry, Wayne :(

The upside to all of this, though, is that, judging by the comments on Google’s Latitude for iPhone announcement post, iPhone users and developers alike are starting to become more aware of how bad an idea it is to tie themselves to a platform that’s actively stifling the innovations its users want. How much time and money did Google spend writing a native Latitude app for iPhone that will never see the light of day? Now imagine it was your time and money down the crapper. Fun.

If you’re dying for a native Latitude app on your iPhone, you shouldn’t give up completely; Apple does have a bit of a track record of caving on stupid decisions under pressure from large vocal minority groups, so it’s possible that they may one day let Google put a native maps app on iPhone. It’s not very probable. There is only Zuul.

Remember last year when I wrote Amazon a letter suggesting that they put Kindle content on non-Kindle devices? Well, they listened to me:

You’re welcome.

Now I just hope that the Android version comes along quickly at the heels of the iPhone version, because I don’t use my iPhone. (Want to buy an iPhone?)

I don’t have much to say lately, but I need to say this:

Google’s Android mobile phone platform is freakin’ AMAZING. T-Mobile’s “G1” handset — which is the first of the commercially available Android phones — is very nearly as awesome a device as is the underlying platform.

Imagine the offspring resultant from a drunken one-night-stand between a Sidekick/Hiptop and an iPhone. That pretty much describes the G1; it is fully touch-enabled and has a wealth of downloadable applications ala iPhone, but boasts the flip-out keyboard and actual navigation buttons which are the hallmark of a Sidekick for those times you don’t feel like looking like a total tool rubbing your fingers all over your phone.

Best yet, you don’t need to deal with any of the iTunes bullcrap that every iPhone owner has to admit to disliking dealing with. If you want to put mp3s (or oggs, w00t!) on it, you simply plug a NORMAL USB CABLE into it and it shows up as a removable drive. Copy your music over and you’re good to go. Same with photos and videos. Software updates come automatically over the air, so no dealing with the endless cycle of backing up and restoring when iTunes makes a mess of things. (Or, if you’re a nerd like me, you can manually download the firmware update and apply it yourself.)

Unlike with iPhone, users can install applications that modify very nearly any aspect of the device, and are not at the whims of Apple as to whether the app will be “allowed” or not. For instance: I have an app installed that can turn on and off features when certain criteria are met. When the GPS finds that I’ve arrived at home, it automatically enables wifi. When I leave it turns it off again to preserve battery. If my battery drops below a certain point I’ve got it set to turn off GPS as well to further save battery. Try doing that with iPhone :).

Want to set an mp3, m4a or ogg file as a ringtone? No problem, support for that is built in.

All-in-all, Android has far exceeded my expectations, and is quite the anti-iPhone platform that I’d envisioned. I highly recommend it.