Google Voice

This weekend I found out that Google has done it again. They have come out with another very useful program on their site. It is called Google Voice and it has a couple great features on it that may change how we use phones in the future.

The first thing it lets you do is make phone calls to other Google account users, landlines, and cell phones from your computer. As of right now, this is all free from U.S. to U.S. calls and text messages, while most out of the country calls are only 2 cents per minute! This to me shows that it is going to pressure phone companies to push their rates down in the future. Now, this can be accessed in your Gmail account in the left sidebar in the chat section.

Now, the next logical thought is "I can make phone calls out but what about receiving phone calls?". This is where the second great feature comes into play. They let you set up a new phone number which will let many things happen. They let you, if you so choose, to link all phones you own (cell phone, home phone, work phone if you choose) under this one number. This makes it so that when the one Google number is called then all 3 phones will ring from that call. This means that the caller won't have to call each phone to get a hold of you, and this also lets you be able to freely roam without worrying if you are going to miss that important phone call.

From a Google phone number, you can then read texts and voice-mail that is sent to that number. Yes, I did say you could read voice-mail. Google takes the message that was left and translates it to text. You can also play the sound as well. Having voice-mail on Google means that you won't have to delete the voice-mail after 14 days, which, to me, is really convenient. Another feature is you can screen calls by sending the call to voice-mail and then listen into the voice-mail being left. This means you can hear what the call was about before picking up the call half way through the message. Its like having a voicemail machine sitting right in front of you! Also, while on a phone call you can record parts of a phone call by hitting "4" on the number pad. This will show up on your Google Voice account after the phone call has ended so that you can listen to that important part of the conversation over and over, just in case there were instructions for you to do something. Now, one of the greatest features for me is you can also set up custom voicemail greetings for groups of people or even individual people. An example of this, lets say you put a greeting of "Hey, you must not be important enough for me to pick up the phone so leave a message" on your phone. That will not be pleasent when your boss from work calls. So, with Google Voice, you can set up one for your friends, family, and work contacts.

In Recap
Google Voice lets you:
1. Make Calls from your computer to landlines, cell phones, and other computers.
2. Create a Google phone number that

       a. Links all phones under that one number (home phone, cell phone, computer, and work phone) so that              when a call is made, it will go to all phones.

        b. Read and send Texts to other computers or cell phones.

        c. READ and listen to voice-mail that has no expiration date.

        d. Screening Calls

        e. Record whole or parts of phone conversations for later listening

        f. Set up custom voice-mail greetings for groups or individual people.

You can view the features listed above in a Google demonstration here!