[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] quicksite:
Oh good, you replied. :) I can never tell if you're soft-spoken (as in never mentioning at all here at XDA) about your "day job" so as not offend XDA-gods, or because it's off-topic, or what. But I noted your supware.net blurb last year... And yes I know that Google Voice is late to the game, and has created their new presence via acquisition of Grand Central, where I have had an account for past year.

I will explore further on the site, and of course use your affiliate link if I decide to get an account.

I was nevertheless admiring how you have been very visible about making idialer work with Google Voice (and similar products)... because it's smart. Solve for the 1000-pound gorilla, and you've also solved for your own offering... I've just followed your development progress for the past year, but like I say, you almost bury the idea that you develop for a service that competes with GV.

I was having a hard time, psychologically, using iDialer, ever since I asked you a long while back if you were ever planning to add pictures to your iContact -- and your unequivocal "no", owing to your desire to keep your branch lean, clean, super fast. Which split me off to iContact BE and now AE, which was really frustrating to me because you've been developing this integrated suite, staying way ahead of the curve, in fact creating the curve for GV, etc ... yet the thing I wanted most you would not offer: photos in contacts.

But now with avatar, it changes the whole value equation for me... which then turns me to pay more attention to iDialer and your mobile implementations for GV.

(hope this is making sense)

Unfortunately what XDA-devs doesn't do, as a site mission, but what I am doing, is building "usability profiles" of typical usages various types of people in different professions have for certain mobile features and functions.

This is where visual "mapping" comes in. Again, this thread structure doesn't help to organize around a suite of integrated products like yours. And thus it is very hard to envision examples of how one would best USE idialer, icontact, avatar, and how they specifically work as a suite. Your own site is clean and clear and organized very well -- yet it doesn't have a visual "map" that shows how all these services & features come together...

... by way of Use Case Scenarios.

I know this post is pushing way off-topic -- but that in itself points to the problem of lack of integration at XDA, due to the limitations of the forum information design structure. Thus,I am working on this on my own, with only hints of what might come in the future seen by my sigfile.

What I would recommend is, if you can take the time or acquire the graphical resources to do this, follow the lead of skype -- who I think do a superb job of visually illustrating how to use their products in very "dumbed-down" average consumer ways. Though XDA originated as a hacker-geek site, with the explosion in mobile app marketplaces caused by Apple's iphone, the mass public is being conditioned, courtesy of multiple millions spent by APple on its iphone/app store branding campaign, to understand very easily the basic concept:

(1) Buy touchscreen phone

(2) Add more stuff to it, to make it do more of what you want.

Let me end on this: I'm not a engineer (I'm a UX Designer), but even I have a hard time understanding how to use iDialer to take advantage of my GV account. It's all so technical I am missing the basic consumer impetus of "why should I install and use this. How will it help me?"

thanks again for replying. oh, last q: Let's say I port my landline # to phone.com .... Then, at a later date, let's say 6 months from now, if I want to port that number to, let's just say, GV, will that be simple or difficult? thx for all the great work you do. it's all first rate.