Google Voice: My Experience
Posted by Chris in Technology on October 6, 2009
About a month ago, I read a short article about Google Voice, and I decided to apply for an invitation from Google to beta test this awesome tool Google is making. Well just last night, I received an email from Google including an invitation to use it.
When setting up my account, I was surprised on how easy and fast it was to setup my phone numbers and get a few contacts into my book. It was so easy to setup, and I was very eager to get started. It took maybe 15 minutes to get my account setup, which includes getting a free local phone number, and setting up things like my name and voicemail greeting. Like I said, I was surprised how easy Google made this for me.
Now for the real usage. Here are a few of the primary features Google Voice brings to its users:
Free Calling/Texting
Using Google Voice, you can call or text any phone number in the US or Canada for free. No limits or charges. This is perfect for people who make long distance calls who don’t want to pay a plan through their phone company.
Free Voicemail
You can set a personal greeting for your voicemail inbox that can easily be changed inside the Google Voice settings. You also can listen to your voicemails from your computer, or from your phone. It also makes a transcript of your voicemails, and can email and/or text you when you get a voicemail with the exact text of the voice message! This makes it easy if you need to read messages, and can’t listen to your messages.
Free Phone Number
You can pick out a phone number in almost any area code that can be set to your account. When people call this number, it will ring on all of your phone numbers you have. That way you are more accessible from 1 number than having to call 2 or more.
Customizable Contacts
You can add contacts to be called easily from your Google Voice account, and an even better feature, setting custom voicemail greetings for certain contacts, and changing the way they can call you. If you have a Work, Home, and Mobile number on your account, you can set which of your phones it rings when certain contacts call. You can also put contacts in groups with your settings for incoming calls.
I really enjoy Google Voice, and plan to use it for quite awhile. I’m really fortunate that Google is giving me a chance to test this out!
For more information, visit www.voice.google.com.
New blog is Up!
For a few weeks, there has issues with hosting my site.
Well first of all, I was hosting off my server in Los Angeles until the hard drive failed, and the server was brought down. Then, I was hosting with the company I was working for on a unlimited bandwidth and disk space hosting. Now, I am on the new company I work for, and I am really happy with it. The new web hosting I am now on is Site5.
So sorry for the downtime, and I hope to have some more posts coming soon!