Google Voice

Google Voice: One Number & More

Posted by Sam Churchill on March 12th, 2009

Google is entering the Internet phone market with a product aimed at tying together all of your cellphone voicemail, landline messages and e-mail boxes.

Google Voice is a new program, coming soon, that assigns you a new central phone number to monitor all your various messages. Google Voice is currently available for GrandCentral users only, but will be open to new users soon.

You should be able to sign in to voice.google.com, pick up a new phone number in your local area code, and assign your various phone numbers to it. Now, when you get voice mail calls on your various phones, the messages are transcribed for free. They instantly show up in your Gmail e-mail box.

The service evolved from GrandCentral, which Google purchased last year. GrandCentral enables you to have one phone number that rings all your phones. Sometime today, GrandCentral should morph into Google Voice.

The free service offers the following features:

• Single number, follow-me ring / Internet calling - A single phone number consolidates all your other numbers.
• Multiservice, visual voicemail - Lets you see your voicemail queue and listen to messages online.
• Better text messaging - It can route text messages the same way as voice calls.
• Voicemail Transcription - Google’s transcription service uses a computer-based speech-to-text system.
• Free Conference Calling - Just ask participants to dial into your Google Voice number and press a button.

Unlike Gmail, there are no ads. Google hopes to make money on Voice by selling low-cost international calls.

source : dailywireless.org