Google Voice is a powerful new tool from Google which is being made available to a limited number of users as part of an extended beta program. Google Voice enables one phone number to be used for cell, home and work phones and provides online management for voice services. Unlike Skype, calls are not made through the computer but instead with your existing devices. No additional hardware or software has to be bought. Google seems to have hit upon a practical solution for people who want to manage multiple phone lines and services. Best of all, it’s free. You can request an invite to be a beta user on the Google Voice website at www.google.com/voice.

Readers who want to access electronic books currently are limited in their choice of electronic reading devices. There’s the Kindle from Amazon, which retails for around $360, and Sony’s Reader, which sells for $270 to $350. Now there’s a new option. The Cool-ER from Interead.com was introduced a few months ago for $249. It’s currently available on the Coolreaders website. The Cool-ER uses the E-Ink display and has the same screen size as the other readers, but is lighter and more compact. There are fewer features, such as no wireless Internet adapter and no Bluetooth connection or keyboard, but it’s still nice to have another option available when it comes to readers.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) was released by Microsoft in March of 2009, three years after IE7. Some of the new features in IE8 include Accelerators, which are a form of selection-based search which allow a user to invoke an online service from any page via the mouse. This helps to cut down on the need to copy and paste text between web pages. IE8 also includes Web Slices, which are snippets of an entire web page that a user can subscribe to. The new redesigned Favorites Bar is able to host content such as Web Slices, web feeds and documents, in addition to the website links which were previously supported.

A commercial for IE8 starring Dean Cain has been circulating on the web. Check out how to overcome S.H.Y.N.E.S.S. (“Sharing Heavily Yet Not Enough Sharing Still”) here:

In a recent New York Times Article, the current state of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is surveyed. Columnist John Markoff looks at everything from current science fiction movies like “Terminator Salvation,” where an evil AI power called Skynet is threatening the human race, to Dr. Raymond Kurzweil’s theories on Singlarity. According to Kurzweil, the future of technology is a point in the future when computer and cyborgs will become more intelligent than human inventors and will take over the process of invention.  Read more about the fascinating development in AI in Markoff’s article.