Google a long time ago bought a company called Grand Central which eventually stopped giving out invites when Google took them over. For a long time Grand Central was in the dark like it fell off the map. There weren't any blog posts or updates given by anyone and the site seemed almost dead except for the fact that it still worked for users who were lucky enough to get an account before Google took it over.
In recent months Google has finally updated and sent out invites slowly to Grand Central users to convert their Grand Central accounts to Google Voice accounts, which is what Google as renamed and re-branded Grand central.
Google Voice is yet another amazing product by Google and will definitely shake things up as much as gmail did when it first came out to the public. Currently Google Voice is only open up to Google Voice users who are slowly being invited to convert their accounts over.
Once invited to convert your Grand Central Account to Google Voice you will associate it with your gmail email and your pretty much done. If you are new to Google Voice you will set up an account and the first thing you will do is pick a new phone number. Currently Google has phone numbers in just about every state but don't be upset if they do not have every area code because they do not. Not being able to find my area code that i live in I settled for a nearby one, which I was just as happy to have.
Once you have picked out your Google Voice number you can start associating it with your different phones. One great feature having a Google Voice number is that you can connect all your phones together with one number. For example you can have your Google Voice number when called ring how ever many phones you would like, so your office, your cell phone, and your home phone can all be tied to one number. When your Google Voice Number is called all associated phones will ring. To some extent you can control which phones are called by time of day or day of week but currently the call scheduler is limited but this is expected because Google Voice is still very much in Beta.
Hands down the best feature of Google Voice is storage and search. What this means is that all your voice mails and text messages are stored online for you to search and keep on record. But how do you search a voice mail if it is sound as opposed to text? Well Google gives you the options to have your voice mails transcribed, so seconds after a voice mail is left Google quickly listens to it and converts it to text, which allows you to be able to search your voice mail. Another feature this voice to text feature gives us is Google Voice after a voice mail in transcribed wither email you or text you the transcription so you do not even have to dial into your voice mail to receive the message you can quickly read it as text on your phone which is super convenient.
Not only can you store voice mail and text online but also phone calls. By this I mean Google Voice gives you the ability to record your phones calls by pressing the number two on your keypad while in a call. Now don't worry about people just recording your calls now without you knowing cause if you select to record a call it will notify the other person on the line that call recording was just enabled.
Google Voice also give you the ability to sort your contacts and give personal or group voice mail recording to each individually. For example if you don't pick up your phone you can have the greeting given to friends be a "Hey whats up dude, leave a message" while if your boss from worked called you and left a message he would here something different then if your friends got your voice mail and his would be much more professional.
Google Voice has a ton of great features and many more to come, it still is a very early product from Google and it is going to be exciting watching where this will go. Currently the world awaits for Google to open up the gates to the public but what Googlers have to realize is Google can not just open Up Google Voice and Give out Google Voice invites to everyone as easily as they could with other Google products such as gmail. The reason for this is each Google Voice account needs a phone number which Google just cant hand out, they need to buy numbers first. But for everyone waiting for a Google Voice invitation the good news is that Google recently purchased 1 million new numbers.
As I happily use my Google Voice account and watch it grow here are some features that should be coming that will make Google Voice just hat much more useful. The first is number porting, the ability to keep your old cell phone number and use it as your Google Voice number which Tech Crunch has already reported Google is working on. Another feature I am waiting for is the ability to tag and sort voice mails and text messages, so if for instance I am planning a party I can tag all my friends voice mails and texts about the party so I can quickly see who responded saying if they could come or not. The last feature I am just dieing to have is Google Voice integration into gmail. What this would allow would be for me to receive all my texts, voice mail and email all in one inbox!
Google Voice is still very early in its infancy but is definitely going to revolutionize your phone voice mail and text messaging in-boxes, its going to be amazing to see where the geniuses of Google take this product.