Everything You Wanted To Know About Google Voice, And More

Rumors are all over the web that Google Voice will be launched soon. According to Gizmodo, more then 1 million numbers have already been reserved with Level 3, the Google Voice’s service provider. As Google Voice comes with features such as free phone calls and free SMS, its worth examining it in details so that we can sign up as soon as its available for public (scroll below about getting an invitation).

Google Voice is a free service that provides you a single number for all your phones, instead of different numbers for your home office and cell numbers. This number is not attached to any specific landline or mobile phone service providers. It just gets diverted to a number that you specify. It uses VoIP protocol to link all your phones to a single number.

Google Voice will revolutionize the concept of phone as it provides many feature, such as,

Single Number for all your phone calls and SMS services

1. Screen and Announce the callers.

2. Ability to listen before taking a call, that is, you can listen to the live voice mail that is being recorded and interrupt it to talk to the person if you want to.

3. Block the unwanted callers easily.

4. Call any number in United States for free.

5. Add a number of phones, then answer to any of the phones.

6. Route the phone call on the basis of who is calling you.

7. Add multiple phones and decide which one should ring on a call.

8. Ability to receive, store and send SMSes.

Makes Voicemail as easy as an email

1. Automatically transcripts your voicemail to text, letting you to read the voicemail, just like an email. Although the Google’s Text To Speech technology is not perfect yet, still the transcriptions are “almost” perfect.

2. Listen to the voicemail on your phone or online easily.

3. Receive instant notifications for the voicemails through SMS or through email.

4. Use different greeting for different callers.

5. Ability to download and forward the voicemail messages.

There’s more. You can use conference calls, record the calls to store them online, switch the phone between the call, use group preferences etc. The ability to switch the phone between the call is really useful. For instance, if you are talking on a landline, but need to go somewhere immediately, just switch the call to your cellphone and keep talking.

Google Voice seems to be very promising, however some people who have used it, are finding it a bit difficult to configure it. They are saying that you need to be tech savvy to use this at this time. But since everything that comes from Google is so intuitive, I am sure they’ll make it easier. You can also refer to the above videos for help.

Now before you go to the Google Voice page to sign up, let me tell you that this service is not public yet. At the time of writing, this service is only available to people from GrandCentral.

However, you can place a Google Voice invitation request at this page. You’ll get an invitation as soon as Google Voice goes public.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Hacktrix to receive latest notifications on Google voice and other productivity hacks.

Enjoy!