Grand Central becomes Google Voice

[Mike Ungerman]

I have been using Google's Grand Central as my incoming phone service for about a year now, thanks to an invitation from Hewie. Initially, it was a curiosity in that I could have my own, free, incoming phone number on Grand Central, and then have it forward that number to any phone I wanted, up to 3 numbers.

I saw this as a way to screen incoming calls, since a caller has to announce themselves when calling the Grand Central number, and then when my phone rings, that announcement tells me who's calling and gives me an idea as to whether I want to take the call. The options presently are, accept the call, send to voice mail, send to voice mail and listen in and accept at any time (but the microphone is muted), or reject the call.

I saw this as a way to have calls "follow me" to my cell phone automatically when I wasn't home, and to reject the "spam" calls one gets between 5 and 7 in the evening, even when you're on a do not call list.

Additional features included the ability to block a number (it doesn't even ring through) or even play an "out of service" tone so the automatic calling devices of solicitors thinks the line has been disconnected.

In my history, I had changed my home telephone service provider a number of times; along the way losing my original home phone number (but that's another story); and the current VOIP service provider of my home service had to change my phone number 3 times until I could get one that wasn't registered with every collection agency in the book for the dead beats that had given them up so I could have a number. Grand Central allowed me to stabilize my incoming number for everyone, even as the home number changed on a regular basis for about 6 months.

So that brings us up to date, and now that Google has decided to bring their service into the main stream, they've added a lot of neat features:

What's new?

* SMS: Anyone can send an SMS to your Google Voice number and the message will be forwarded to your mobile phone(s). You can also reply to or send SMS straight from your inbox.
* Voicemail Transcripts: Fully automated transcription service (not perfect) that gives you a text preview of what the voicemail is about and allows searching for voicemails based on this text.
* Conference Calling: If you have call waiting, when you're on a call and a new call comes in to your Google number, you'll have the option to “conference the caller with your existing call," which will add this call to your existing call.
* Quick Call & Quick SMS: You can easily call or SMS anyone by just typing a name (if that person is in your Contacts list) or any number. We'll connect the call from the phone you specify. This allows you to display your Google Voice number as caller ID.
* International Calling: For free calls within the US and great rates on international calls, just call your own Google number and press 2 to connect. Once you get the dial tone, enter the number you would like to call. And remember to add 011 for international calls.
* Goog411: Access directory assistance through Goog411 by calling your own Google number and pressing 4. From there you can speak the name of a business and location and get connected directly for free.

I'm making the switch today, so in comments to this blog, I'll post my results. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section, and I'll reply to them as well.