|
Digital News Report – Google Voice is probably not making the telephone companies that happy right now. The new Google Voice website is up and running and anyone can participate in the voicemail, phone routing, and text messaging from email, among other useful tools. The Google Voice has a lot of tie ins for mobile phone users, but it could still be useful for a person with a regular telephone or a someone that wants to send text messages for free.
Here is an overview of the features of Google Voice:
Voicemail Transcription – This feature will transcribe your phone callers voice message to text, which then can be read on your cellphone or on your computer without having to listen to the actual message. Google says that the voice transcription isn’t perfect, but it could be helpful if you are at a place were its loud or you have to be quite. You can also search all of you old message transcriptions to find that phone number or important information at a later time.
One Phone number – Google Voice gives you the option to get a phone number assigned from them. That way you can have one phone number that is called. It will then ring all of your telephones at the same time, or you can tell it to ring certain phones based on who is calling or the time of day. Your phone number would stay the same if you ever moved.
Personalized Voice Mail Greetings – If you want one message for work and another message for friends. You can set up a personalized greeting for a person. You can record more than one greeting. Google Voice calls your telephone so that you can record a message.
International Phone Calls – Low cost international phone calls is another reason people will want to consider using Google Voice. You can prepay for the calling amount inside of Google Voice.
SMS to Email – If you both have a Google Voice phone number you will get a text message sent to both your telephone as well as your Google Voice account. You can also have the text messages sent to your email. When you reply in your Google email back to the text message, the email will be converted back into a sms text message and be sent back to the recipient on their phone.
Share Voicemails – You can share a voicemail by email. That way you can let everyone know about it.
Block Callers – You can block calls by going to the message in Google Voice and selecting block calls. Everytime the person calls again they will get an operator recorded voice message saying that this number is no longer in service.
Screen Callers – You can listen into a voicemail and decide if you want to pick up and talk to the person. It is like the old answering machines.
Mobile App – Google Voice has a mobile app which lets you access your Google Voice account on your smartphone. You can use the Google Voice mobile app to send text messages for free.
Conference Calls – You can even have conference calls with the Google Voice.
To check it out and sign up for Google Voice you can visit www.google.com/voice.
By: Victoria Brown
|
