Who’s sick and tired of trying to reach people at home, at work, on their cell, etc. etc. blah blah blah? Google has solved your problem and they did it with style… Introducing:
Google has made this free service so that when you register with them, they give you a single phone number. You give this single number out to everyone who wants to call you, even the people who you want to screen first before picking up. Then, when they call that number, it will ring you on the phones you have registered with Google Voice. Don’t worry, there are ways of filtering and screening which are explained after the break. The idea is quite nifty. Unfortunately, at the moment, it is invite only from Google, but I managed to get into the beta program after about 2 weeks, so go ahead and register! More details about the system after the break.
So for those of you who are wondering, “What about my smelly Aunt Marge who calls me all the time to tell me about how her poodle got sick again?”. There is a solution that makes everyone happy. First of all, Google allows you to split your contacts up into groups. This will make it so that, anyone in your Friends group say, will ring through on your house phone and your cell phone on any day of the week, where as your smelly Aunt Marge will only ring through on your house phone and only during the weekdays. You get that sort of control with Google Voice.
Another amazing feature is it’s Voicemail system. Google doesn’t just take messages like a good little secretary, it does one better. It will take the message and transcribe it into text and email it to you! So if you get a call, you can’t take it because you’re in a meeting, they leave a message, and now you can see what they want and whether it’s urgent or not! Really handy.
They have ways of configuring it so it fits your needs completely. You can setup rules so it will only ring certain numbers on certain days (and even certain times of day) for certain groups. So configure your socks off and to your hearts content.
