Google Voice on TPC?

[ambfl]

Ok so this is a bit off topic but not so much since it can be used on the TP2. I keep hearing talk about Google Voice but since I'm a newbie to smartphones I'm not really sure how it works. Can some of you (wonderfully patient) techies explain what the benefits are of this service and how it works? Are there any other apps that work similarly/ better/ worse?

 

[ejonny]

Google voice is an easier way to manage phone communication. You can sign up here. If you receive an invitation you are allow to select a phone number. Sign up and participation are free for domestic phone calls.

After you select a phone number then you can tie your Google Voice phone number to one or more "physical" phones (land line or mobile phones). Then you can have you Google Voice phone number automatically ring through to any other phone number (or multiple at one time).

I have it configured so that my Google Voice number rings two different office land lines (I have multiple offices) and two different mobile phones (an iPhone and a Touch Pro2). So regardless of what office I'm in or what mobile phone I'm carrying people just have one phone number for me.

When the Google Voice number rings through to one of the physical phones you have set up, you can configure Google Voice to screen the call for you (which might include having the caller state their name). When you pick up you can hear who is calling, decide to answer the call, or send the call to voicemail. If you send the call to voicemail you can actually listen into the message as it is being left.

You can also set up Google Voice so that voicemails are transcribed and sent to you as both an email and a text message (although the transcription isn't great it's usually good enough to get the gist of a message).

Also when someone sends a text message to your Google Voice number it can be routed to multiple mobile phones. And when you respond whomever sent you the text message don't know which mobile phone you are responding from.

Finally, Google Voice can be set up so that certain phone numbers (based on caller ID) get certain greetings prior to voicemail or are allowed to ring particular phones etc.

It's really an amazing system and has to be used to really understand the power of what it can do.

So here is the tricky part. Unless you are using a special Google Voice application on your phone or using the Google Voice web page, when you call someone from any of your phones the caller ID will show the number of your physical phone rather than your Google Voice number (same with text messages). So that can get a little tricky.

There are a couple of Google Voice applications for Windows Mobile. I haven't found one that I like enough to keep yet. But hope soon there will be one that seamlessly replaces the normal dialer (to route outbound calls through Google Voice) and text messaging.