Phone calls return to Gmail thanks to a Hangouts upgrade

Google is making good on its promise to bring back free voice calls in Gmail, after temporarily removing them a couple months ago.

Voice calls disappeared from Gmail in May, when the company replaced Google Chat with a new feature called Hangouts. While Hangouts still allowed users to make video calls and receive calls to their Google Voice numbers, the ability to make outbound calls to landlines and mobile phones was missing, at least for a little while.

Over the next few days, Google will roll out an updated version of Hangouts, restoring outbound voice calls and adding new features to the service.

 
Users can now create a group call by adding multiple phone numbers, and can have mixed calls with some recipients on voice and others on video. Google's also throwing in some silly effects, such as applause and laughter, through the Google Effects app.

Calls within the United States and Canada will remain free. (Last we heard, Google had extended free calls through 2013; we've reached out to Google to see if it'll stay that way indefinitely now.) Hangouts users in other countries can now call the United States and Canada for free as well. Calls to outside the United States and Canada are still subject to various per-minute rates.

So far, there's no word about whether SMS messaging will be brought back to Gmail, but chances are it'll show up eventually. Google has said that Hangouts is “designed to be the future of Google Voice,” so it seems likely we'll see more integrated Voice features, such as SMS and voicemails, over time. (Here's hoping we do, at least.) For now, you can still send text messages from your Google Voice number using the Google Voice Website.

Google says voice calls should be available over the next few days, appearing as a phone icon on the right side of the “New Hangout” box. Users will also be able to make calls through Google+ and the Hangouts Chrome extension, using the drop-down menu on the right side of the “New Hangout” box.

'Thanks for Sharing' Trailer: Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo Star in Sex Addiction Comedy

Gwyneth Paltrow and Mark Ruffalo star as new couple with relationship problems in the comedy Thanks for Sharing.

Ruffalo stars as Adam, a consultant who spends five years in sex addiction therapy before dating Phoebe (Paltrow), who appears initially perplexed when told about the therapy.

STORY: Kevin Hart, Josh Gad to Star in Comedy for Screen Gems, Miramax 

Tim Robbins plays Adam's sponsor, and 1600 Penn's Josh Gad portrays a medic who also is in therapy, where he begins a friendship with Dede (Pink). The film is directed by Stuart Blumberg, who co-wrote 2010's The Kids Are Alright.

The film debuted in 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"Showing an even-handed mix of dramatic episodes with light moments, [Stuart] Blumberg and [Matt] Winston’s script mostly treats sex addiction not as joke fodder but as a serious condition," The Hollywood Reporter's reviewer David Rooney wrote at the time.

Thanks for Sharing, which will be released by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, hits theaters Sept. 20.

Twitter: @sajilpl

Thanks, But No: Social Media Refuses To Share With Turkey

An anti-government protester wearing a gas mask uses a cellphone to read the news on social media as demonstrators gather at midnight in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park on June 13.

Turkey's battle with the Internet took a new twist on Wednesday.

A Turkish government minister said Twitter has refused to cooperate with the government, but that Facebook had responded "positively" and was "in cooperation with the state."

Turkish Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications Minister Binali Yilderim, quoted in Turkish media, did not elaborate on what this cooperation entails. But Turkish officials have complained that social media outlets aren't sharing user access information with prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.

The story took an additional turn later in the day, when Facebook issued a statement denying that it was cooperating with the government:

"Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests. More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child, which has been the case in only a small fraction of the requests we have received."

Turkey has stepped back from earlier calls to ban social media, which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called "a menace." A few years back, Turkey did ban YouTube after videos considered insulting to modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, were posted, but the ban was largely ineffectual and was eventually lifted.

Still, the recent protests have the government searching for new restrictions. An official from Erdogan's AK Party recently said, "A false tweet is more dangerous than a bomb. Social media regulation is a must."

Turkey isn't the first country to try to rein in social media sites, which have figured in various protests and civil disobedience around the world. During the 2011 riots in Britain, lawmakers called for social networking sites to be shut down during time of unrest, and China blocked Facebook during 2009 riots.

Facebook was also blocked after Iran's elections that same year, and Egypt briefly closed it during the Arab Spring demonstrations in Cairo.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have forced Research in Motion, the makers of BlackBerrys, to comply with local regulations regarding its encrypted content that had left authorities unable to monitor communications.

And as our colleague Deborah Amos reported earlier today on Morning Edition,
the Jordanian government has blocked hundreds of news websites across the kingdom amid rising dissent.
What Turkey intends to do next remains something of a mystery.

Ozgur Uckan, a new-media expert at Istanbul's Bilgi University, tells NPR that censoring social media sites presents a technical challenge, and that may be why officials are talking about criminalizing certain content, in an effort to intimidate users and encourage self-censorship.

But some microbloggers have already been targeted: Several arrests in Ankara during the protests there were of young people who had tweeted about the developing protest. In some cases, the tweets simply warned people to avoid certain parts of the city for their own safety.

 

Thanks, Utah, for the fodder

It’s so much fun when Utah makes the national news.

Time was, I would cringe when a national news story popped up about our liquor laws, a Southern Utah town passing ordinances hostile to the United Nations or requiring gun ownership, the latest polygamist scandal — a double-cringe-worthy subject for Mormons like me — and the list goes on.

But at some point, I stopped being embarrassed and sad. Now I find myself embracing the shimmering eccentricities that help to define the Beehive State in the national mind.

I mention this because recent history has been especially entertaining in the Utah-is-news business.

• There was a samurai-sword-wielding Mormon bishop who defended a female neighbor from a villain who tried to force his way into her home.

• Pranksters hacked into electronic road signs that subsequently alerted Utah County motorists, “ZOMBIE INFESTED SCHOOL” and “ZOMBIE ATTACK PREPARE!”

• Then there was the Salt Lake City couple who bought doughnuts at a grocery store, inserted razor blades into the pastries and ate them in an attempt to coerce a settlement out of the retailer.

Which brings us to last week’s ain’t-Utah-hilarious moment on the national stage: The televised Miss USA pageant with Miss Utah managing to appear even sillier than the TV show happening around her.

To recap: Miss Utah Marissa Powell was asked the following question: “A recent report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?”

This was Powell’s response: “I think we can re … relate this back to education and how we are … continuing to try to strive to … figure out how to create jobs, right now. That is the biggest problem in … I think, especially the men, are, um … seen as the leaders of this, and so we need to try to figure out how to … create education better so that we can solve this problem.”

Say what you will about her answer and specifically the “create education better” phrase — plenty of people did; everyone from Internet trolls to semi-serious pundits grabbed up their broom handles to smack Utah’s latest piñata — Powell was attempting to make sense of a question that was itself a feat of stupefying ridiculousness. Was it asking what social significance there is in women being the primary earners? Or that they are paid less than men? Or why Americans abide such inequality?

But all that post-pageant analysis/reportage/brutality was too late to diminish Miss Utah’s bewildering reply. Her answer will ricochet around the InterWebs forever. And that reflected “glory” is all Utah’s to own.

So, funny as this is — and it IS hilarious, you must admit — what appears to have been lost amid the guffaws over Powell’s verbal face-plant is that the person who asked the question was a cast member of a reality-TV show called “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

Granted, I’ve never seen the show, but understand it to be the intellectual equivalent of, say, “The Glenn Beck Program,” which has been scientifically shown to reduce the size of viewers’ brains.

Speaking of paranoid delusionists, the Miss USA pageant is owned by Donald Trump, who has long been America’s Most Boorish Billionaire. At some point, you would think, the raging, unapologetic kitsch of the whole thing should inoculate the pageant from any mockery whatsoever. Mocking the show, then, is mockery squared.

All that said, I’m genuinely thankful for Utahns’ bizarro tendencies. Without them, what would columnists have to write about?

Therefore, my new motto: All hail the beehive.