Google’s Grand Central providing phone numbers and voice mail service to the homeless:

“When you lose your home, you lose more than your house,” said Google’s spokesman. “You lose a permanent way of staying in touch with family members, employers, and social service providers. Being able to give a phone number to people and access voicemail can be a very powerful thing in sustaining quality of life.” [via CNET, “Google expands free phone number and voicemail project”]

Grand Central has always looked like a good service. Now it looks even better.

Right on. CNet’s One More Thing blog, inspired by the Verizon Wireless announcement that it would be opening its network to compatible, non-Verizon branded handset devices, analyzes the importance of open cellular networks, wherein consumers buy their devices outright from whichever retailer they prefer rather than receiving subsidized handsets.

Key points:

1. “This might make for more expensive phones up front, but it could also give phone makers the opportunity to come up with more innovative devices without having to get approval from Verizon for every last piece of software.”

2. ” ‘The provider of the device will determine the OS, distribution system, and whether to include Java applications. It is not ours to make that determination, that is up to the provider,’ said John Stratton, Verizon’s chief marketing officer.”

3. “…we’re going to want to do more than whatever a certain company’s executives decide is appropriate for us to do…”

4. “The dozens of companies gearing up to build phones based on Google’s Android software will have a huge network to design for in the U.S. And application developers will have 63 million potential new customers.”

All that said, I’m not convinced that Verizon’s announcement of this week heralds the fall of the cellular Iron Curtain. It would be nice if it did, though.

It’s a great little series of photos, but this one takes the cake: the emergency “off” switch that can’t be activated. Well, looking at the photo closely suggests that if you used a Phillips-head screwdriver you could remove the acryllic casing… but not in time to prevent the explosion.

If you like button and switches and every other “simple” interface, you’ll definitely want to take a look at the History of the Button blog. Bill spoke at the Adaptive Path UX Week in August, but I missed his presentation. Now I’m hooked on his blog.