Want to Make Your Life Easier? Try Google Voice…

My brother had been bugging me for some time to set up an account on Google Voice, since before Google acquired the company and service known as Grand Central. He raved about the service. I didn’t much listen to what he was saying; I only remember that he thought it was great. At the end of June after a long hiatus, during which they worked on improvements, Google finally reintroduced the service as Google Voice. There is a caveat – one could only subscribe by invitation. My brother insisted I sign up, so I put in a request for an invitation and was thrilled to receive one so soon. I am now officially a Google Voice member.

You’re probably wondering, “That’s great Claudia but what does being a Google Voice member mean?” Well, first of all, it has nothing to do with one’s ability to make silly voices — although if it did, I’d probably still sign up. Instead, Google Voice is a service that will make your life easier by revolutionizing how you use your phone(s).

It is not my intention to confuse the reader with my horridly complicated explanations of technology so I prefer to quote directly and succinctly from Google’s welcome email, lest I get it wrong:

Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your voicemail to text. Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left and the ability to make low cost international calls. To start enjoying Google Voice, just give out your Google Voice number. You can record custom greetings for your favorite callers or block annoying callers by marking them as SPAM.

You get all these services at your fingertips and they are all free — well, except for the “low cost international calls.”

Google Voice believes that every call should find a person, not a location, so with this philosophy in mind they link all your phone numbers together. With Google Voice your incoming calls can ring your home, mobile line(s), and work phones – wherever you set it to ring, based on the caller. Just think about how great it could be to have emergency phone calls find you wherever you are.

Is someone bothering you? Just set their calls to go directly to voicemail! Do you hate that you can’t set a humorous voicemail message in case you receive important calls from people who won’t look kindly on a little joke?  No problem. You can set one message for your friends and another for all your professional calls. You can even set a different message for every caller…well, that is, if you have a lot of time on your hands.

How about if you’re on the line and can’t switch over to take another in-coming call?  Now, with Google Voice, the other person calling in can leave a message that can be transcribed into text and you’ll be alerted via e-mail. You can actually read your voicemail without having to hang up on your call. Neat, huh?

This is how Google Voice works. When your phone rings you are presented with three options:

1. Accept the call
2. Transfer the call to voicemail
3. Transfer the call to voicemail but listen in on the message as it is being left.

If the caller is not recognized from among your Google contact list, it will ask for the callers to identify themselves and you can decide what you prefer to do with the call.

As mentioned above, you can even pick up the phone and listen to the person leaving a message for you and the caller will be none-the-wiser. Wow, there is nothing quite like technology to increase your rudeness factor exponentially. Now, I know you’re thinking that you’d never be so blatantly rude as to listen in on your voicemail as it’s being left, while you decide if you’d actually like to speak to the person calling– but you do it all the time at home when you call screen anyway! However, no one else in the room will know how rude you’re being unless, of course, you’re listen in on speakerphone.

Another great feature on Google Voice…you’re talking to a friend on your cell in the car on your way home, you get to your place and you want to keep talking but you don’t want to use any more of your plan minutes — what do you do?  Well, you can transfer the call to your home line without having to hang up and call your friend back. How cool is that?

Google even allows you to search for the perfect phone number when you subscribe. Do you want to see if your phone number can spell something out? …your name? …your favorite Baseball team?  Or maybe you have a lucky number. Just do a search. I decided on a phone number that includes my initials since I couldn’t find any other number in the area that spelled out any particular words that I liked. Silly? Perhaps, but also very fun! I think most people will enjoy having a choice, rather than just being assigned a number.

Another great thing about the Google Voice phone number, it’s yours for life! You can move all over the country and your Google Voice number will stay with you. You don’t have to bug your friends and contacts by updating your phone number every time you move.

Anyway, this post is already too long, but I just wanted to say that for all these reasons and more Google Voice is a great service created to make your life less complicated. Now, go request an invitation…you know you want to.

Check out David Pogue article Is Google Voice a Threat to AT&T?