Can Google Hear You Now?

Dear Blog,

My bro invited me to use Google Voice. This is a cool little service that tries to replace your old voicemail service.

What I expected

Well, like my voicemail at my old engineering job, I knew I'd probably be able to play through the computer. It was cool, but was it worth Google taking over my voicemail just for that?

What I didn't expect

It doesn't clutter your email if you don't want it to. There's a seperate "Inbox" of voicemails on the Google Voice homepage. If you want to be notified by email, it'll send you an email with a direct link to play the voicemail. On top of that, Google Voice transcribes the voicemail! That's awesome. So, not only do you get a link to the audio file, it sends you the text of what the person said! Now that's nice! Now I'm seriously considering leaving my old voicemail to go with Google.

The setup

Not hard. These are the steps I went through (if memory serves me correctly):

• Gave google my phone number
• Google gave me a two digit code
• They called me and asked for the two digit code
• Google Voice account got created and voicemail # was given to me
• I was given a number to type to switch my current voicemail to Google voicemail
• Changed the settings so that I get an email (you can also get SMS, or text messages, of the call) when a voicemail is recieved.

I know somewhere in there I was able to record my greeting before I got the voicemail account, but I forget. Anyway, setup was easy, and I had Google Voice.

Conclusion

Well, I don't know for sure how I feel about Google having access to my voicemail, but the features are darn cool! Maybe if Sprint would offer this to me, I can use them instead of Google. Give it a try, and if you need an invite, I think I can send them!

- ETdoFresh