Google Voice to remain free in US & Canada in 2013.
»techcrunch.com/2012/12/26/google···gh-2013/

As you know, 12/12/12 and we will have to wait 88 years for 01/01/01.

So what? No reasonable person would be confused by an ISO date, especially in the US....

Whaaat??? Ignorance truly must be a bliss!

Ever heard of China?

So why pay for the phone service?

Because many people realize Google is taking "payment" for GV service, by sucking any bit of data possible from its users' phone habits, whether just To/From/Date/Time call logs, or even transcribing actual conversations behind the scenes (who'd put it past them?) -- all to be aggregated into its Matrix.

This is a trade-off many are willing to accept. To charge actual money for their service, in addition to the data-suck, would be too much, and send users to regular VOSPs who earn an honest living by providing a no-strings telephony service.

Chinese is a popular language because both the nation and the economy of China are so large.

But it is not useful as a lingua franca.

That is where English really shines.

If scientists from Kiev, Warsaw, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, and Buenos Aires, are meeting in Shanghai, they're going to converse in English. You know that.

As for GV's awesome unique SMS service, every time i tried to use it to enter a contest or get a free sandwich coupon, it got rejected, presumably because GV isn't recognized as a regular-ass, spammable cellphone provider. If people are migrating to smartphones with data plans, they might as well just use regular email anyway.

Just thinking out loud here.

If Google Voice does eventually turn into a paid service and offers competitive rates and 911 service, plus maybe a few other goodies, why would someone want to pay to port out?

Ever hear of every other country in the world? ...English as a second language?

I stand by what I said. (And you should check some more sources.)

Or any other "latin" language (for almost all of the months). Fortunately, more people in the world either speak or understand (well enough) English (including the months of the year) than any other single language (esp. for those who ever have the need to deal with some language other than their native language(s)). More importantly, though, I do--which is all I actually need to "worry" about. :D (And I'm not suggesting a new "standard" for the ISO and its minions, so... no worries.)

Just one reason why I like 09Dec2012 10Dec2012 better--no ambiguity.

The "K" in KB is for 1024. :D

The "bi" in kibibyte is for binary. :)

Because I'm afraid, that the clerk, who will use it, doesn't know abut ISO or any standards at all...

It's now knows as a kibibyte (KiB)! ;)

Why would you not switch to ISO8601 on American cheques, which have a free-style date notation?

That's probably the Canadian way: quietly fix it yourself, instead of going around, complaining and petitioning.

If seriously, I do as you mentioned - the Canadian way. I switched all my computers to ISO date format as more practical for me. But when I sign a check, I use mm/dd/yy format.. But I still "complain", or rather try to educate people how important delimiters are, because it makes reading less ambiguous for everyone... :)

They have translucent letters under each field that tells the user what kind of the date format they're supposed to use. And cheques by different banks have different kind of formats, no kidding there! I'm not sure if you can request a specific date format as a user; but I guess you can simply switch banks if you disagree with your bank's selection (or perhaps order custom cheques from an official printer?). :-) That's probably the Canadian way: quietly fix it yourself, instead of going around, complaining and petitioning.

Where'd you get the quote that ISO8601 format was not used anywhere prior to being invented by the ISO?

Google needs to decide what to do with Google Voice. Currently the service doesn't create any revenue for Google except for outgoing calls outside of North America.

And if you think that people should be free to use whichever notation they feel like, go to Canada: today's date there can be expressed as 2012-12-09, 09/12/2012 and 12/09/2012. Canadians, eh? :-) Ever seen a couple of Canadian cheques from different Canadian banks? :-) I'm not even kidding: all three date formats are entirely valid! Check it out: »www.cdnpay.ca/imis15/eng/faqs/ch···te_Field

Whereas in most California areas it is akin to:

Local calling
ZUM-3 (typically 13-16 miles in metro areas)
Local/Regional toll (Intra-LATA)
Long distance (Inter-LATA)

I would agree that THAT goes beyond what is needed for carrier competition. At this point there probably should be no service distinctions other than Intra-LATA and Inter-LATA.

Google needs a new equipment, that works with their services directly... And there is no such thing do far.

How Google could start changing customers for the service if users don't have hardware, that can communicate with them directly.

Speaking of delightful delimiters, don't get me started on how they do things in India.

They take 653,275,829 and make it into:

65,32,75,829

and call it:

Sixty five crore, thirty two lakh, seventy five thousand, eight hundred twenty nine.

Talking about GV, do you know how many devices support XMPP now? AFAIK not many... How Google could start changing customers for the service if users don't have hardware, that can communicate with them directly....