Google Voice Comes to BlackBerry and Android
Welcome back!
Google announced late last night that it would launch Google Voice applications for the BlackBerry and Android phones. These new apps make the service easier to use by automatically routing your outbound calls through Google’s service.
This is great and everything, but the more important question is: “What’s Google Voice?”
Google Voice used to be known as Grand Central, before being bought by Google in the way, way back time of 2007. Google seems to be ramping up the service by providing more and more invites (it’s invite only, at this point) and numbers.
So, what is it and what can it do for me?
Google Voice is a central routing station for your phone calls with a single number for you to provide to anyone and everyone. Changing locations, changing jobs, changing homes all lead to changes in phone numbers, catching everyone up, and hoping you don’t lose a third of your network in the process. Hopefully, having a single number that you can keep forever can help with these challenges.
Additionally, Google Voice offers many other perks.
- Call Screening
- Listen before taking a call
- Block callers
- SMS — you can even do this from Google without any charge on your cell phone!
- Place and take calls — now improved with these new apps
- Phone routing — have different rings for different callers or groups of callers
- Voicemail — with TRANSCRIPTS! Yes, you will actually be able to read what Speedy McSpeederson actually said in his voicemail!
- Conference calling
- Call recording — this one is HUGE if you ever do interviews over Skype. No more need for separate recording software.
- View your inbox/voicemail from mobile devices and online
I just recently got an invite to Google Voice and I’ve secured a number, but I haven’t started playing with it, yet. Now that there’s a BlackBerry app, I may have to get going with that.
What are your thoughts?
