Google Voice

Using

You need to sign up for Google Voice .

I signed up last week, received my invite email, and snagged a great Google Voice number. The most basic, boss thing about Google Voice? Google Voice lets you pick one number that’ll ring all your phones: your Blackberry, iPhone, home phone, that home-no-one-knows-about phone, and your office. But it gets better than that: Google Voice screens all your calls discretely, lets you set up different outgoing messages for different callers (“Maybe you’ll get lucky and I’ll call you back, toots,” to “You’ve reach the office of Me, Incorporated,” and even “The number you have dialed has been disconnected”).

But the best part of Google Voice? Voicemail. All of your messages are automatically transcribed, emailed or texted to you, and saved online, forever. You can mark voicemail as spam and block callers that way. Or you can listen into your voicemail messages live, and interrupt a message if the call’s worthy of your immediate attention.

How much trouble is Google Voice going to help you avoid?

I’ll give you my new number — it’s good — but since I can so carefully screen my calls now, I’m not sure I’d pick up.

You know, because you give such good voicemail.

Google Voice Text Messages

Google Voice sends your text messages to whatever numbers you want (all of your cells, you player), and saves every message online.

Google Voice International

International calls are $0.02-$0.03 per minute for 200+ countries, which makes it cheaper than Skype. (900 numbers, I’m looking into.)

Google Voice Mobile

You can download an Android Google Voice app, or turn your Blackberry into your Google phone with the Google Voice Blackberry application. Until you can access Google Voice as a web app on your iPhone, you can jailbreak your iPhone and download the iPhone Google Voice app (you should jailbreak your iPhone anyway. You can do so without turning your iPhone into a slick brick). But if you don’t want to bother with more software, you can always route calls through Google Voice by dialing your Google Voice number from your cell.

How to Set Up Google Voice

1. Sign up for a Google Voice invite, and wait for your email.
2. When you get your confirmation email, log into Google Voice using your Google account.
3. If you use GMail, you may already have a stuffed addy book for Google Voice. Otherwise, import contacts into Google Voice by exporting your contacts from Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc., as a comma-delimted CSV file. Then, import this .csv file into Google Voice by clicking “Contacts” on any Google Voice page, and selecting “Import” in the top right portion of the Contacts section.
4. You’ll be automatically prompted to set up your voicemail greeting. If you want to change it, trip through Settings > General > Voicemail Greeting > Personal Greeting drop-down menu > Record.
5. Need to add another phone? Select Settings > Phones > Add a phone that you want to forward.

That’s it.

Now I want to hear about all the trouble you’re avoiding using Google Voice.

Posted 10.Aug.2009, 08:38 am | Categories: Tech | Tags: Cell Phones, Google Voice, iPhone, Mobile

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