Major Google News: Google Voice –What is it?

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You might not have ever heard of Google Voice because for almost the last 2 years Google has been mostly silent about its development but this is perhaps one of the biggest new applications that they have announced in many years. In fact it could be one of the biggest ones ever next to Gmail. What is it exactly?

Well it’s like having a universal phone number, like how Gmail was meant as a way to centralize all your email accounts and make it a one stop email app; Google voice has some very interesting capabilities. The one downfall it seems and I guess you have to understand this is that you probably won’t be able to transfer your existing phone number. But perhaps you have a home phone, an office phone and a cell phone this would let you drop all 3 and pick a single number that would work across all 3. Sound crazy? Yes that’s why it’s such big news but wait that’s not all. (Trying to sound like Billy Mays)

Well another big feature is that it’s free! Yes completely free, as of now… International calling requires that you purchase credits but the rest is totally free. I assume it’s because they want everyone in the world to join and then they figure out a way to charge up the (fill in the blank) to everyone once it’s a monopoly but who knows. But wait there’s more…

Voicemail transcription

This is a pretty cool feature. Basically it’s like a voicemail to text so you can read your voicemails. I don’t know if you can recognize how cool of a feature this is but I hate voicemails. They are slow and clunky. I have to dial my number, enter in my code, wait, wait, wait, and then hear the number it’s from even though I probably know who just called, wait, listen more, wait for the person to get to the point, wait, then I realize its someone just telling me to call them back. Yet I have caller id and I already know that. Well Google Voice is effectively bringing voicemail back from the dead. The text is searchable, quickly read etc. It’s incredible. It’s amazing.

Text Messaging

This is a one stop shop like I said and now you can have full SMS all through the one number and it goes straight to your phone. You can even respond using your phone. I guess your universal number acts as the gateway.

There's plenty more stuff and of course you are probably already scrambling trying to figure out how to sign up. Last night Tech Crunch announced this story and was giving out 100 free invites. Of course I raced to my Gmail to try to be one of the lucky few and that’s when I was hit with a Gmail outage. Lucky me huh? I doubt I would have been fast enough because hundreds of people pounced on this trying to be one of the few. Actually it looks like they updated this: “We’ve now received several thousand email requests, so the 100 are gone.”

So if you were hoping to get on board you are going to just have to wait. Google officially announced this feature here. I am assuming this thing will roll out soon. It was supposed to come out in 2006 so waiting a few more days won’t be too bad. They are also promising full Gmail integration so like I said this is very big news.

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