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GrandCentral Reborn As Google Voice
Some anonymous person wrote in to say that Google has relaunched and rebranded GrandCentral as "Google Voice." The article says it will "revolutionize telephones. It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens." Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot.
I signed up to be notified when it's available to new users.
https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Maybe Google gave it up for undisclosed cash to Apple since they are using the same term for a new type of multicore support in Snow Leopard. Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board. Crazier things have happened.
Last I heard all their features were free, but I kinda felt bad because I knew the ones I liked could disappear at any time because that was what they said the plan was after they left beta.
All features would be free during the beta, and then they said the "core" ones would be free after that with the rest being paid.
Really? I didn't know that steam powered cassette based answerphones would let you listen in on a voicemail to your home line even though you were in the office. Like they always say...you learn something new every day.
Good news. If you had RTFA you would have read the part where it says this is optional.
Hey, G1 Central author here. Glad to hear you like the app; it's been a lot of fun to write. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with Google Voice once I get the option to upgrade.
P.S. - G1 Central is available under the Apache 2 license. http://svn.evancharlton.com/wsvn/G1Central
Project page here: http://evancharlton.com/projects/g1central
The whole point is to not have to give out your real number!
I've been using grand central for about a year. I love it. It allows me to keep my cell number private.
I also use the G1 Central app for android. It is the best solution out there.
They're using their grammar skills there.
The phone number aggregation thing is not exactly new. If you have a Vonage account, you can already do that. Vonage calls this feature 'SimulRing'. When someone calls your Vonage phone, it will simultaneously ring up to 5 phone numbers of your choosing (home, work, cell, etc.).
What I want to know is, is GrandCentral/Google Voice better?
GrandCentral doesn't require you to subscribe to a VoiP service, and it's free. I have DSL, which requires a landline. It's not cost effective for me to switch to a cell/VoiP phone choice since I still have to pay for a land line.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Still, although ANI may not be "spoofable," it can be manipulated or uninformative. For example, any call placed from any phone in my office carries a general company ANI even though the call could be originated from any of hundreds of phone numbers owned by the firm. We also have off-premise extensions (OPXs) that connect to the office PBX via SIP. Calls placed from those OPXs have the same ANI as calls made from the physical office, which would be deleterious if a call was placed to 911 from one of these phone. (We have implemented a safety workaround for this, but the point still stands.)
In bulk they are almost nothing, in the cents-per-month range.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
" I was growing to hate that phone. We get maybe 2 legit calls on that phone a month, the rest are all telemarketers, a dozen a day sometimes, almost always between 6:00pm-9:00pm. It was driving me nuts.
So why didn't you sign up with the Do Not Call Registry?
Also, you can record the "sit" tones - the 3-tone "number not in service" tones that you hear - onto your answering machine, and the telemarketers predictive auto-dialer will hang up. As an added bonus, if someone calls you long-distance, they can still (on some systems) talk for free for a minute or two (any more than that and they'll get nailed for phone fraud, same as any other phone phreak).
How GrandCentral handles the cell phone dead battery voicemail problem you described is it requires you to press 1 to accept the incoming call. That way it never gets picked up by your answering machine.
If only we had a nice phonetic language like japanese, you could just use vocaloid
I'm a Vonage user. Yes, they do partially do this, but in a MUCH more limited way.
1) There is no option that I know of to screen the calls via voicemail.
2) They don't have any useful way of blocking callers (you can block anonymous, but thats it)
3) The system isn't configurable to forward/simulring individual numbers differently. I find this to be a problem. I have my home (vonage) number simulring my cell phone. Problem is, when I'm trying to call my wife at home, the phone at home ring once, then the simulring to my cell phone kicks in, but since I'm initiating a call, it goes straight to voicemail, which counts as answering the call, so the home phone stops ringing and I get my own voicemail.
4) Theres no way to transfer a call from one phone to another.
5) I think Vonage charges a fee per voicemail to do the transcription.
That's just for starters.
Dude, are you NOT READING AT ALL?
You, the person who is being rang, needs to pick up the phone, and press "1" to accept the call on the specific phone. Your voicemail isn't going to push "1", so your voicemail wont get the call. Simple. If you, the person receiving the call, does not push "1", GrandCentral/Google will handle the call as if it was never picked up.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".