Voices Calling
Your furry host has scored himself an invite for Google Voice. I’ve been playing with it for all of nearly an afternoon, so it’s time to gush. Think of it as an unboxing video. Only without the box. Or the video.
Google Voice is a voicemail system with bonus features. As a simple voicemail system, you assign your mobile phone to use Teh Goog as your provider, and then configure as you would a normal voicemail system – record your name, an outgoing message, whatever. And then you configure, and configure. You can record different messages for each of your groups. You can record specific greetings for specific people.
But that’s not all… you also have the option of signing up for a new Google phone number. This number forwards incoming calls to up to 6 lines, so you can set it up to ring home, work, cell, 2nd line, beach house… or whatever suits you. And you can pick which lines ring for which groups, so you can give out 1 number forever to everybody, and if they’re family they can ring everywhere but if it’s some vendor at a trade show it will only ring at work. Or, better, just drop straight to voicemail.
And that voicemail… ain’t just voicemail anymore. The mighty Goog servers save your messages, transcribe them, send them to you in email (or sms or through the Voice app), and the messages live on their servers where you can google search them forever.
And I’m sure there’s plenty more, but I’m still playing. Of course, all of this is just padding out Goog’s arsenal of information as part of its Evil Plan, but in the meantime the tools are just so damn cool. Pardon me, I have a soul to sell.
Oh evil google guy, have you checked out google TiSP?
Eh, but it’s still voice. I prefer text — there’s a nice asymmetry to it in that it takes a lot longer to write a message than it does to read one. Therefore, it serves as an inherent sort of squelch control for incoming messages; anyone sending a message necessarily spends more effort in sending it than the recipient does in reading it — which IMO is the way it should be. Nothing against Google; they rock, but I’m not a big fan of voice messaging, even with a Google take on it.
Or maybe it’s just because I’m a curmudgeon.
Alas! Though I felt an initial flush of joy, I’m afraid I’m on a septic system and cannot partake of this generous service.