At first, I was really cheesed about what Amazon did concerning removing books from the Kindle. But their apology is a demonstration that they have taken responsibility for their actions and learned a little something along the way.

A few months ago, the GV Mobile application for the iPhone was released and I happily purchased the application since I’ve been a GrandCentral, now Google Voice user for quite some time.

But recently, Apple (perhaps with AT&T pressure) pulled this application from the iTunes store. And they rejected the official Google Voice app from Google.

Thankfully, Apple didn’t “kill” the apps on the device if you already had the application running, but no more updates.

What I don’t understand is why an application can be totally fine for several months, including a few patches, and then suddenly it is rejected. Is there a problem with the application review process? Or was Apple too busy dealing with “naughty pictures” applications at the time.

Now the FCC is investigating. Apple will claim control over its closed system, Google will claim “openess,” and AT&T will say it wasn’t them. Perhaps we will all learn something.

I do feel like I have a little “badge” from this war each time I run GV Mobile. Thanks for your hard work Sean Kovacs.

From any phone, simply dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411). It is all voice activated and the couple of samples that I tried worked perfectly.

Here is a little video from the wacky people at Google.

More information about this service is available on Google’s site.

Head on over to maps.google.com and do a search for your area. Then click the “Show search options” link next to the “Search Maps” button. From the drop-down menu, you will see “Real Estate.” Click that and you will see houses for sale in the area.

When you click on any of the results you will see the usual Google pop-up balloon with information about the listing. From there, you can link to one or more websites for the listing.

“Why are so many people that click on the link to my site, bouncing?”

But first, A little definition is in order. What is bounce rate? According to Google’s definition in Analytics…

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. You can minimize Bounce Rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

At first you might think that you should do something about it. Change the page content, create targeted landing pages, add graphics, make your product cheaper, etc.

Wait a second and consider this. Bounces happen.

People search for things, click on links and realize that your page wasn’t the right one for them. That’s okay, in fact, probably saving you time by reading and leaving.

Writing this made me think of this recent post by Seth Godin. Rather than focusing on the bounces, consider the people that stayed on the site. How many pages did they read, how long did they stay on the site, did you have return visitors?

It isn’t that the bouncing clicks are silly, it is that it is silly for us to focus on the bounces.

• Workplace Experiments

What I especially like are the 4-day work weeks. It is a similar concept to Google giving you one day per week to work on your own projects, except the project is actually about making sure that you are fully rested and refreshed.

It is too easy to simply work more hours to try to get more done. I can relate to 37signals experiment because I find that my best work comes when I get plenty of rest, exercise, and spend time with my family.

Google is possibly one of the most powerful tools on the Internet, if you know how to fully leverage its power.

The Google Guide has great information for novices and advanced users alike to get some amazing results from the search goliath. There is even a cheat sheet for power users.

Even if you only learn one thing from this site, it is worth 2 minutes of your time.

As usual, the Common Craft show (this time for hire) comes through with a nice high level description.

And, Salesforce.com has launched a new blog for this integration. And as a follow-up from today’s webcast, visit http://www.salesforce.com/googleapps/ for complete information.

If I were in Microsoft land right now, I’d be a bit worried. Okay, really worried. Here is a video tour from Salesforce.com.

Putting Google Docs into Salesforce.com means seriously convenient document collaboration. A better experience than what MS-Office can provide, at least for collaboration. Integrating this into the sales cycle can lead to amazing productivity gains and improved service. And adding Gmail and Google Calendar to Salesforce.com means small businesses have one less reason to use Exchange Server.

The combination of two big gorilla web platforms creates something very threatening to Microsoft. Yes, Salesforce.com probably could have created its own version of the Google products. But the alliance with Google means enterprise customers have a path to running entirely through web-based services. And both companies are looking to advance the web as a platform.

Also interesting to note, this wasn’t so much a business deal, but a feature requested by Salesforce.com users through their Idea Exchange which evolved into a great opportunity for two companies.

(If you are a Salesforce.com user, add a comment with your thoughts…)

These together change the game for telephony. With a nice combination of these, you don’t need landlines ever again. And, your cell phone mixed with WiFi could be a seamless operation.