Ten years ago I bought a personal 800 number. Then I forwarded the number to wherever I was – cell phone, office, home. It worked pretty well, provided I didn’t screw up and leave the forwarding to the wrong number. Voice mail was a bit of an issue too.
You’d think in the intervening ten years someone would have come up with a solution to the issue of having three numbers on your business card and three disjointed voicemail systems, but there’s nothing widespread. Now Google has.
I’ve been using Google Voice for close to six months now. Here’s what it’s like. Someone calls your Google Voice number. All the phones you’ve set up ring simultaneously. You pick one of them up and you get told the name of the person calling. You have choice of answering, sending to voicemail, or sending to voicemail while you listen. Voicemails get transcribed to text and sent to your email and SMS. Plus everything shows up on the Google Voice website which is set up like Gmail.
There are some other cool features. SMS is the same way – comes to your phone and shows up on the website. You can SMS by typing on the website (easier than a cellphone) and the history shows up on the website. Want to make an outbound call? You can pick the number out of your address book and tell Google Voice which phone to use. Press the button, the phone rings, and you’re connected to the person your calling.
Want more? Check out the widget on this website. You can use it to call me right now. You can set the times different phones ring…set different greetings…go crazy. It’s free. It doesn’t seem to be rolled out to everyone yet, so if you want a pass, email me. Google may rule the world.
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We use Google Voice as the primary number of use for texting at http://www.CashitGadget.com, and it works amazing!