It’s basically a ritual now: Fresh feature debuts on new Android phone; hack-happy G1 owners see new feature, develop seething jealousy; said owners work tirelessly to steal new feature. Last week, Google Maps Navigation hit the Droid. Today, the G1.

Google Maps Navigation will be part of Android 2.0, and Android 2.0 is expected to come to most—if not all—Android handsets on the market eventually, so given how complicated this hack is (fairly!), and that it requires a rooted phone, it’d be prudent for most folks to just wait this out. That said, there’s no saying how long it’ll be until Eclair seeds out to older handsets, and there’s no guarantee that the G1—and old fart in its little corner of the universe—will ever get it. Anyhow, here’s what you need to do, from XDA:

Download here

Make sure you have CyanogenMod 4.2.3.1, by the way.

1) Unzip zip to desktop
2) Run Part 1.bat
3) When prompted to press any key, do so; the phone will reboot
4) When your phone is running again, run Part 2.bat
5) When prompted to press any key, the installation process is done.
6) Make sure GPS is enabled
7) Open Maps and press OK
Press Menu
9) Press Directions
10) Enter an end point
11) Click Go
12) Just under “Show on map”, click Navigate.
13) When prompted to install the voice codec, do so.

And there you have it: Free, not terrible turn-by-turn navigation for your G1, without Android 2.0. Early reports say it runs well; let us know how it goes for you in the comments.

I have recently become a fan of Google Voice but one thing holding many people back is having to use a different phone number. This is something Google has been working on and today have introduced number portability for Google Voice. That’s right, now you can get Google Voice with your existing phone number.

With Google Voice using your existing number you get all of the following features:

• Online, searchable voicemail
• Free automated voicemail transcription
• Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
• Email and SMS notifications
• Low-priced international calling

Though you don’t get all of the same features as you would using a Google Voice number, the features listed above still make it worth using. Especially if you are like me and spend a good portion of your day on the computer. Personally, having the ability to listen search and listen to voicemail, and send or receive SMS messages online is preferred over actually using my phone.

This really does make getting started and accustomed to Google Voice easy. To get Google Voice you can either request an invitation (usually only takes a week or so), or if you already know someone with Google Voice, ask them for an invitation.

That was a quick update from Google since they just updated Google Voice 2 weeks ago. Nikolaus let me know that Google has updated Google Voice for BlackBerry to version 0.1.6 from version 0.1.5.1. Once again it is a pretty minor version bump but considering how popular Google Voice is and the features Google has been adding it is probably worth downloading.

Pick it up at:
m.google.com/voice

Let us know in the comments if you notice anything new! Now I can finally go to sleep!