Google wants you to call your mother

Remember how Google lured people to Gmail by providing huge amounts of online storage? It's doing it again with phone calls.

Google announced Wednesday that Gmail users can make free long-distance calls in the U.S. and Canada through a cool new feature that lets you place calls from within Gmail to a mobile or landline phone.

"Call phone" is a new option in Gmail's list of contacts to chat with, on the left side of the page. You can dial with a keypad that pops up, or enter a contact's name to call him or her.

Calling phones from computers isn't new, but Google has built a simple system and underwritten its launch with a generous batch of free calling.

From Google's announcement: "Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer's microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don't spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?' "

The offer is the latest way consumers are benefiting from the ongoing battle over Web services of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. It also comes as students are heading back to school, setting up new e-mail accounts and choosing which services they'll use to stay in touch with friends and family.

Gmail's calling is a great deal, but it also reflects the new financial realism affecting the maturing search company.

Unlike the online storage accounts provided with Gmail, which are perpetually free and continue to expand, the free long-distance calling is promised only for the next four months.

After that, Gmail customers accustomed to the service — and new Gmail users drawn by the calling — will presumably have to start paying fees.

Google is also charging from the start for international calls placed through Gmail.

Required gaming

A liberal-arts college in Indiana is requiring its incoming freshman to play "Portal," the hit puzzle game from Bellevue's Valve Software.

"Alongside 'Gilgamesh,' Aristotle's 'Politics,' John Donne's poetry, Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' and the 'Tao Te Ching,' freshmen at Wabash College will encounter a video game called 'Portal,' " Michael Abbott, a Wabash theater professor and game enthusiast, announced on his Brainy Gamer blog.

The game is required as part of a mandatory course called Enduring Questions, which addresses "fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives."

It's the first time a game has been required coursework at the all-male college, established in 1832 in Crawfordsville, Ind. Abbott said he was in charge of finding alternative material such as films, music and art to expand the course. He wrote:

"I recalled reading Daniel Johnson's recent essay on the game and its strong connections to Erving Goffman's seminal 'Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.' One of the central questions of our new course, 'Who am I?' is the focus of Goffman's study. He contends we strive to control how we're perceived by others, and he uses the metaphor of an actor performing on a stage to illustrate his ideas. Johnson describes it this way:

" ' ... we're acting out a role that requires constant management ... of the interaction. The front stage is the grounds of the performance. The backstage is a place we rarely ever want to reveal to others. It contains the truth of our obstruction and to reveal it would be to defraud our identity in front of the audience — it simply spoils the illusion of where we're placing ourself in the interaction.'

"This tension between backstage machination and onstage performance is precisely what 'Portal' depicts so perfectly — and, no small detail, so interactively."

In the game, players progress by solving puzzles and manipulating the environment, opening portals to move through the space.

Valve may have to start an education-discount program. Spokesman Doug Lombardi said the company wasn't involved and learned of the course from news reports. He said via e-mail:

"We obviously are flattered by it, and feel it's very strong validation that 'Portal' (and the upcoming 'Portal 2') are games that make you smart, and the promotion of problem solving found in 'Portal' and 'Portal 2' make them they type of games that parents DO want their kids to play,"

Lombardi said Portal is being used in game-design courses, but this is the first time the company has heard of its use in traditional curriculum.

"Who knows? Maybe it will one day become as universally found in campus bookstores," he said.

Portal has an academic history. The game was created by students at Redmond game college DigiPen Institute of Technology.

Valve representatives saw "Portal" during a student showcase, hired the team and released the game in late 2007. The sequel — "Portal 2" — has won high praise from critics and is one of the most-anticipated games coming in 2011.

DigiPen, by the way, is starting classes next month in its new Redmond campus on Willows Road, where it's having opening ceremonies at 1 p.m. Friday.

Teacher's fan

A former hedge-fund manager offering free academic tutorials via YouTube has a pretty big fan in Medina.

Sal Khan produces the short, free tutorials on topics such as biology and calculus from a closet in his Silicon Valley home. He's reaching more than 200,000 viewers a month, including Bill Gates.

Gates has been watching the videos with his son, Rory, 11, and is meeting soon with Khan, according to a Fortune magazine story.

Gates also called out Khan's teaching last month at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Khan was already on his way to becoming a celebrity, at least among tech tycoons interested in online education.

The "Khan Academy" was featured on PBS NewsHour in February, and venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife have provided more than $100,000 to support Khan.

Brier Dudley's blog excerpts appear Thursdays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.