As you probably know, Apple (or possibly AT&T?) has given Google the shaft over the last 6 month and removed Google Voice from the iPhone. The developer of the application “GV Mobile“, Sean Kovacs, disagreed with Apple’s decision and chose to continue to offer his application on the iPhone through the JailBreaking appstore “Cydia“.
If you know Google Voice at all, it already does have the ability to forward SMS messages to your cellphone, but the problem is that the forwarded messages are charged the same as normal SMS through your cellular carrier. By using Push notifications you can bypass all cellular charges since push uses data instead of SMS.
The only draw back to using Cydia, besides having to JailBreak your phone, is jailbroken applications (like GV Mobile) are not able to use Push notifications. However, using a concert of applications, you can now get Push Notifications for GV Mobile. There are a few alternatives, but we’re going to go over Prowl and GVMax.
Prowl an official Appstore supported application ($2.99) that adds Push notifications for developers and 3rd party plugins. The Prowl setup is actually very straight forward:
- First you’ll want to register at Prowl site and get your API key.
- Then you’ll need to purchase and install the application from the Appstore.
- Finally, load the Prowl app on your phone, login with your new account, and add the redirections for GVMobile SMS & Voicemail.
- You just need to click settings, scroll down to bottom (I personally disabled the “Ask before redirection” option) and select redirection.
- Tap the update launchable list and the add new redirection. Type “GV SMS” in the Application name, scroll down, and select “GVMobile (SMS)“.
- Select add new redirection again and type “GV Voice” in the Application name, scroll down, and select “GVMobile (Voicemail)“.
Now, GVMax take a bit more to get running. GVMax an standalone application that uses Google’s free Appengine cloud computing services. The application takes minimal resources, so the vast majority of Google Voice users will never come close to the usage limits for free users. The install and setup process is a bit complicated. However, if you just can’t follow or don’t want to try, you can pay the GVMax developer $25 via paypal and he’ll do it for you. Keep in mind you still have to create the Google Appengine Application and invite him from the dashboard. If you still want to trudge through and do the install yourself this is what you will need to do:
- Open Google’s Appengine site, login with your Google account, click “Create an Application“, select your country and cellular carrier in the drop downs, put your cellphone number in the box, and click “Send”.
- Once you get the SMS, take the code you received and place it in the in the verification box.
- Pick a name for your GVMax application and put it in the Application Identifier section, verify that it is available, type a title for your application, scroll down and accept the terms by checking the box, then click “Save“.
- If you are using a Google Apps site with your own domain name and don’t see a page confirming that your application was created successfully then you need to goto https://appenging.google.com/a/, then verify your new application is listed.
- Install Java SDK (I believe simply having the JRE installed is sufficient for this): Here
Install Eclipse IDE Here: Win | Mac (64bit) | Lin (64bit)
- Open Elipse, click the Help menu, select “Install New Software..“, Click “Add…“, leave the name blank, paste this location: http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5, click “Ok“
- Check both boxes next to Plugin and SDKs then click “Next“.
- Select all three options: “Google App Engine Java SDK 1.3.0“, “Google Plugin for Eclipse 3.5“, and “Google Web Toolkit SDK 2.0.0“, and click “Finish“.
- Use an SVN client to checkout GVMax source tag here: http://gvmax.googlecode.com/svn/tags/4-0-1/
- Import the “gvmax” project into Ecplise by clicking the “File” menus, select “Import“, expand the “General” header, select “Existing Projects into Workspace“, browse to the SVN source folder “gvmax“, click “Finish“.
- Expand the “gvmax” workspace, expand “src“, expand “conf“, open “gvmax.properties“.
- Change the application name to match your Google Appengine Application name you selected, change your email address to match your Google account email address, and save your changes.
Optionally: If you intend on getting notifications sent to Google Talk, you can use GVMax’s buddy server, but you’ll have to get an external key from the admin by emailing “gvmax@gvmax.com”. He will need your Google Appengine Application name to generate your key.
- Expand the “war” header, then expand the “WEB-INF” header, and open “appengine-web.xml“.
- Expand the “appengine-web-app” section inside the editor, select the “application” name and modify it from “gv-max” to match your Google Appengine application name, and save your changes.
- Right click the “gvmax” header at the top of the workspace, select “Google“, then “Deploy to App Engine“.
- Verify your google account is listed in the email section, then put in your password, and click “Deploy“.
- Everything should deploy successfully, if not try to verify you updated the two files above correctly and saved each of them.
Now that you have Prowl & GVMax both installed you just need to configure your account settings:
- Open your GVMax application by going to your application URI: https://<your application name>.appspot.com.
- Login with your Google Voice account details, and click add user, type your google voice account details again scroll down, check the box next to “Foward to IPhone (Prowl API Key)“, paste your Prowl API key in the box (you can get it again by logging into your Prowl account and clicking settings), and click “Save“.
- Log in to your Google Voice account, click “Settings“, click “Voicemail & SMS“, check the box next to “Email the message to:“, make sure the address drop down contains your GMail address, and click “Save Changes“.
- Log into your GMail account, click “Settings” on top, click “Filters“, click “Create a new filter“, type “*@txt.voice.google.com” in the from address section, click “Next Step“, check the box on “Forward it to:”, and type “sms@<your application name>.appspotmail.com“, and click “Create Filter“.
[ Via GVMax Tutorials | GVMax User Manual | Google Plugin for Eclipse ]
Google just gave Apple another flip of the bird today with offering Google Voice in full HTML5 fashion! Now a simple Safari bookmark is all you need to get the majority of the goodness of the full GV Mobile app offers without the need to Jailbreak your phone.