The Rabapab Blog

So I finally got my Google Voice (GV) invite last night. I was able to get my account mostly setup and the GV app for Blackberries installed on my phone. I have been waiting for a while for GV to be available to check out, but they have been under a closed beta with the existing Grand Central users since GV was announced. The basics of GV are the following.

• One number for all your calls and SMS, which basically means that all of your phones can ring at the same time when someone calls your Google Voice number. You are in complete control over which phones that you have added to your account will ring when a call is received.
• Voice Mail Transcription, completely automated voice to text transcriptions can be sent via email or SMS text message, whenever someone leaves a voicemail. Very nice when you do not have time or the ability to check your voicemail.
• Listen In, which allows you to listen to voicemail messages as they are being left, just like with a physical answering machine. Upon hearing the callers message you can decide to then take the call if it is someone you want to talk to.
• Phone Routing, which allows you to send calls to certain phones based on who is calling.
• Personalized Greetings, allows you to setup Personalized voicemail greetings for individual callers.

And those are just some of the features of GV. I have begun to use my GV number for business contacts, as in companies that I do business with that require me to give them my phone number. With the spam features built into GV I will easily be able to filter out the unwanted telemarketing calls that might come from giving my phone number out to those companies. I normally don’t get too many telemarketer calls anyway, one of the beauties of using only a cell phone, which are naturally unlisted numbers anyway. So with the GV number that adds just another layer of filtering that I did not have before. Over time I will be switching all of my existing service accounts over to my new GV number. That way every one of them will be using that number to reach me, and I will be able to take advantage of the features included in GV to make sure that I am getting only the calls that I want to take.

As I spend more time using GV and start getting regular calls on it, I will toss up a quick post to update everyone on my thoughts for the service. I have been excited for some time to check GV out and now that I have a chance I really want to see how useful it could be.