Google Play stores: Tides Near Me and Tide Chart FREE (+TidesnearMe1 ; app.hanitaro.com) do not install outside the USA.
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/01/29
What worked to get Google Voice on my USA cell phone with a European Google account, didn’t work for the top “Tidal” listings Tides Near Me and Tide Charts FREE (I didn’t bother checking any payed hanitaro app).
Apparently truckloads of developers think it is wise to limit their application to a certain geographic region, excluding all tourists as potential customers.
Fine: I installed “Florida Tide Times” and it works well, especially the built-in map makes it really easy to use.
I wanted this because we were staying at Sanibel Island (Florida) and wanted to do some low-tide shelling (some love shelling) as that’s the best time to find many and inspect both the living creatures, and collect dead shells.
Lesson: make your app available as widely as possible or you will miss customers.
Back to Google Voice
If you have a USA phone number, you can apply for a free Google Voice number that can make free USA phone calls (and a lot more) from either the Google Voice app, or voice.google.com in your internet browser with intuitive shortcut key support, the Chrome plugin or even from GMail using the https://mail.google.com/mail/?voice URL.
Like the Android Google Voice App, the iOS Google Voice App is officially only available in the USA iOS App Store.
Though the Android App Store mentions “This app is incompatible with all of your devices.” to indicate you are not allowed to install the app when your Google account originates from outside the USA (you can change that, but it is a lot of hassle, and sometimes makes stuff unavailable that you had access too).
Search for https://www.google.com/search?q=google+voice+0.4.2.82+site%3Awww.papktop.com (which is currently the most recent version).
Actually, just
- grab the latest version number from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.
- then replace the version number into the Google Search query
google voice 0.4.2.82 site:www.papktop.com. - then download the APK, and install it.
The fun is: PC World posted a nice Google Voice article about a week after I got it to work, so I couldn’t stop pushing this blog entry to the front of the queue (:
After installing Google Voice, you also might want to install the free Voice Choice 1.0 or the cheap Voice Choce 2.0 (that does install on European Google accounts) to make the calling experience even better.
You can get a fresh USA Google Account (for instance through a VPN service like UnoVPN), but that means the hassle of switching accounts on your Android device and working around bugs surrounding that. Been there done that by accident.
Note: Google Voice is ending XMPP support in a couple of months in a move to Google Hangouts, see these links:
- Google Drops XMPP support for Google Voice on May 15th 2014. : Android.
- GrooVe IP – Free Calls + Text – Android Apps on Google Play.
- What’s really happening with Google Voice? » TechNotes.
- How it used to be done: How to use Google Voice for free outgoing calls on an Asterisk/FreePBX system (the no-XMPP way) » TechNotes.
- Google moves away from the XMPP open-messaging standard | ZDNet.
The good things:
- Calling from within Google Hangouts works fine on a Mac or PC.
- Receiving calls inside Google Hangouts works fine on a Mac or PC.
- Receiving calls inside Google Hangouts in iOS also works fine.
- Making calls inside Google Hangouts in iOS also works fine.
The bad things:
- On Android, calling through Google Voice requires a mobile network connection for both outgoing and incoming connections. It was promised for early 2014, but not there (yet?).
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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