IT, Communications, google
Should You Sign Up for Google Voice? Xconomy Readers Share Their Beta Experiences
Wade Roush 6/22/09
(Page 4 of 4)
“One feature I have yet to use is the outgoing calling feature. Since I don’t understand what the benefits are for me to take these extra steps to make any outgoing call, I haven’t tried it.”
“I haven’t tried the outgoing call feature. Seems like too much trouble, and in fact I forgot about it.”
“My friends/family are having difficulty switching from my old number to my new number.”
“None that I can think of.”
Would you recommend Google Voice to your friends or family? Why or why not?
“For the ones who would benefit from a single number.”
“Absolutely, it has saved me money and hassle having a new phone and contract just for business.”
“Absolutely with the caveat that the person who is going to use needs to be a bit of a techie (not super technical, but my wife who is not technical would get lost in the concept), lots of configuration options which I enjoyed learning and setting up. This has been by far one of the coolest applications I have seen. How many time have you had a phone die and you lost all of your numbers. With Google Voice, this is a thing of the past. And if you lose your phone, you can set up a temporary number and use your computer. Ultracool concept!”
“My wife is a therapist and will be starting a private practice this winter. I think Google Voice will be a good option for her. It should allow her to contact clients through her cell phone without giving out her personal cell phone number and allow her to keep accurate records.”
“Would I recommend it? Yes, actually I would, I think it will fill a definite need for some people. There is generally a high level of confidence about Google products.”
“Absolutely.”
“The call screening, ringing multiple phones, voicemail, and voicemail transcription are great features. I would recommend this to others. I do believe that there is a degree of technical knowledge that is needed to use and get used to the service so those not used to trying new technology may get discouraged or not understand the benefits.”
“Yes and no, I would not recommend it if the person using it is not technical and I feel that they would be intimidated by the ability to route calls. I would only recommend it to power users and/or people who can use routing for phone calls.”
“Yes. Having a Google Voice number allows portability and privacy. I think that they would especially like the built in call screen.”
What features would you like to see added?
“E-mail to voice—read me urgent e-mails would be great.”
“The ability to have the caller ID concatenate both the Google Voice number and the caller’s number in the caller ID field [for incoming calls]. This would allow me to know which number they are calling along with their number. At this point, it is a binary decision.”
“What I want from Google Voice:
*I’d like a way move my home line to the GV number so i could make calls out on it easier.
*I’d really like to see it work better with my cell phone as well. I’d like to be able to use its voice mail and transcription service to replace my cell phone’s voice mail.
* I have an Android phone, it seems really obvious to me that there should be some better integration.”
“The things that it does, it does right, except outbound handset dialing.”
“1. Number portability. This is not only incredibly useful, but absolutely needed to give consumers confidence and ease the transition. I would also REALLY like Google Apps support. At the moment my domain is hosted on Google Apps, and I use that account for everything. I hate having two different Google accounts and the separate problems associated with it.”
“As far as additional features I would like to see, the only thing that comes to mind is better integration with my cell phones. I switch between a G1 and a Windows Mobile. I just recently came across http://docs.evancharlton.com/docs/GV, but I haven’t tried it. There doesn’t appear to be any solution for Windows Mobile.”
“I would like to see a desktop client for OS X / Linux / Windows so I can make and receive calls via the desktop. This would be AMAZING and I would pay $20-$30 for this software.”
“A: Display name with caller ID. There are asterisk plugins that can do this and I assume that google could do the same thing. Single number multiple extensions (e.g. let me replace my office pbx with Google Voice).”
“I would love to be able to route phone calls to my desktop from Google Voice and that would be one of the best things it could offer me.”
[Update 7/10/09: Lifehacker has a good piece today on "how to east your transition to Google Voice."]
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at (617) 252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wroush.
6/22/09 9:31 am
I tried to give my GV number to selected folks as my phone number. Old contacts never quit calling cell number I’ve had since 1995. New contacts eventually caught cell number and called it directly. Total failure. Need to exchange GV number to cell phone and old cell phone number to GV. Then GV would work as envisioned. So far, dont see a way of doing that.
Success path for me: put GV on do not disturb. Changed cell phone voice mail to point to GV rather than carrier’s voice mail. Cell phone voice mails go to GV, get transcribed and sent to email account. Pretty good tool at this point. I now use it daily. Maybe less use than Google hoped, but perfect for me.
6/22/09 10:32 am
Wade, you and your readers may be interested in Skydeck’s mashup with Google Voice:
http://skydeck.com/blog/announcements/google-voice-mashup
Skydeck addresses some of the biggest problems that you bring up. You don’t need to change your number and you don’t need to change the way you make phone calls. Right now we support Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.
Best
Jason
6/22/09 11:38 am
Wow, I wish I had scooped up one of the beta invites… I’m really anxious to try it out and have tons of uses for it as I’ve been living over in Europe for a while now and need an easier way to manage the numbers i have in the US & over here…. if anyone still has a beta invite that they didn’t activate, i’d love to put it to use! You can email me at ryan.haugarth at gmail.. I’d really appreciate it!
6/22/09 7:22 pm
i missed out on that annoucement=\. Can someone please invite me to the program or send me invite that not activate. appreciate for your help. email = speedtechnologies at yahoo.com
6/22/09 10:24 pm
I’ve been an avid Google Voice user from the day I signed up. Having used Bill Warner’s Wildfire for 15 years, I was used to the “ultimate” phone concierge with an incredible female receptionist’s voice to boot. There’s no question that the transcription feature is one of the more compelling capabilities. While it’s available with other services (SimulScribe), having it integrated out of the box (phone) is a real benefit. Truthfully, I have few, if any complaints. More than anything, I have lots of requests — like — since Google Voice has my contact list, there ought to be a way for Google Voice to initiate a call for me without my remembering the phone number through voice recognition or prompting with the first few letters of the name of the person I am calling. This was one of the beauties of Wildfire. Actually, the Google Voice designers ought to touch base with Rich Miner who was at Wildfire and ought to be able to help blend the best of both worlds! Thanks again for the beta. I love it!
6/23/09 3:18 pm
I wasn’t lucky enough to get a beta invite but from what I’ve read it doesn’t look like GV works as a main business number.
The issue I have with Google Voice is there can’t be multiple extensions associated with the account so for a small business there is no option for pick ext. 1 for Joe, 2 for Amy, etc. There are two of us at my office and we need our own voicemails. Am I missing something or am I correct on my assumption?
I’m looking into Toktumi, http://www.toktumi.com/WhyToktumi.aspx
I haven’t spoken with anyone that has used them but the feature set looks great on paper. Anyone have any experience with them? I’m thinking of giving them a try but I’d like to hear some feedback before I go down the number porting path. Thanks.
6/23/09 4:05 pm
Hi Wade:
Thanks for an excellent article on the pros and cons of Google Voice. I’m in the online phone business myself and we are all watching GV very carefully as they have the potential to eat our lunch! Some will be in trouble (e.g. SpinVox and PhoneTag sell voicemail transcription for a fee – that’s dead), others will survive by focusing on different niches. My company Toktumi may be of interest to some of your readers if they contemplate using GV for a business.
Okay here comes the shameless promotion but I wanted to share this with your readers as I thought some might find it helpful – particularly those that have decided to strike out on their own and run their own business.
Toktumi is like a professional-grade version of Google Voice, designed for businesses that don’t want to trust their calls to a free service, who need service level guarantees and live customer support. In additional to GV-like features, we offer business features like auto-attendant, 800 numbers, a PC softphone, fax, desktop sharing, and a new mobile app called Line2 launching on the iPhone in a few weeks, similar to GV Mobile.
There’s a free 30 day trial available at the toktumi website if people want to check us out.
6/24/09 7:03 pm
I have a Google Voice number. I don’t use it. Think I’ve used it once or twice since I got it over a year ago. You get what you pay for, in this case you pay nothing.
7/11/09 5:21 pm
Good, GV is awsome,i got invitation from my friend..signed it up..working great i need to learn more about it ..one solution and one call for multiple destination where ever you are there google voice will follow..dont miss it..who ever has just sign it and enjoy the service..soon world will be a local call…Thanx Rajuvamuda
7/23/09 1:26 am
Been using Grand Central before it was turned into Google Voice. I was a bit shy about giving it out to contacts as I didn’t fully understand the power but I made the switch this spring when they renamed the service. Good stuff, one of my favorite new toys this year other than the iPhone.