Geek Swagger.
Posts tagged Google Voice
Saving Money With Google Voice
Jul 27th
Let’s be honest, paying $20 a month for unlimited texting is ridiculous. Text messaging uses less data than almost any other service a wireless company provides, and yet it is one of the most expensive. You can read more about the cost of providing text messaging to wireless providers , but one of the more notable quotes from the article is just below.
"Six hundred text messages contain less data than one minute of a phone call. If we put that into dollars and cents, at twenty cents per text, those six hundred messages would cost $120 for the equivalent of a one minute phone call."
So just do away with texting, right? Get a data plan! You can do so much more with a data plan and it doesn’t cost a whole lot more per month than ulimited texting on most carriers. There is one problem, however. Texting is popular. There’s a good chance that you have more than a couple people in your life that love to text, so getting rid of or cutting back your texting plan would mean cutting off communication with them or risking overage charges every month when you exceed your text limit. That’s the problem I was facing, until I implemented Google Voice properly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had Google Voice for a while and always thought it was a neat service. Essentially how it works is Google will provide you with your own phone number, and then this number can be forwarded on to your actual number (or any other phone number you have). Additionally you can use your Google Voice number to send free text messages on the web or from your phone! I actually prefer using Google Voice to text because I can do it right from so it’s like chatting on an IM client (there are far fewer that way).
To be honest the trickiest part of moving to Google Voice as my primary texting platform was getting the people I text most-often adjusted to my Google Voice number, and training myself to load the on my phone instead of going straight to the standard text messaging application. In both scenarios I applied a bit of brute force, and time. I would suggest starting with just the handful of people you text most often, for instance your family members, close friends and significant other or spouse. The next time you see them (after you’ve set up your Google Voice account, of course) ask to borrow their phone for a second. Just go into their contacts application, replace your current number with your Google Voice number and you’re all set! If you’ve set your Google Voice phone number to forward to your mobile phone number then you can receive calls and texts from them for free. It’s as easy as that.
VoiceMac - A Desktop Google Voice Application
I do have one more tip if you’re planning on switching to Google Voice. I mentioned above that I like texting with Google Voice because the web app makes the experience more like sending an instant message than playing finger ballet on my phone’s small screen. That’s true, but I also think that the Google Voice website is in need for a redesign with some functionality enhancements. One of the most annoying parts of using is that you have to manually refresh the page to see new texts as they come in. There is good news, however! If you’re using a Mac, there’s a cool desktop Google Voice client called VoiceMac that automatically shows you new texts as they come in, just as though it were an instant message in iChat. VoiceMac supports growl notifications as well, so you’ll never miss an important text, and best yet it’s completely free. You can take a look if you’d like.
I haven’t tried any of the Google Voice desktop clients for Windows but a quick Google search shows that there are some available, so don’t shy away if you’re not using a Mac. Now that I’m using Google Voice I was able to pare back my texting plan from $20 a month for 5000 texts to $4.99 for 250 a month, which is Verizon’s bare minimum package. That’s means I’m saving almost $200 a year by relying on my data plan that I was already paying for anyways! If you’ve had success cutting your monthly bills down by implementing free web services please let me know about them in the comments, or if you’re a Google Voice fan tell me what your favorite feature is! I do have a couple of Google Voice invites if you’d like to give the service a try. They’ll be available on a first-come, first served basis so don’t hesitate!
Google Voice
Oct 3rd
I was fortunate enough to get invites to both and this week, but for now I’m going to stick with discussing Google Voice. This is mostly because nobody I know has Google Wave yet and, for a product that’s about collaboration with other people, it makes it hard to form an educated opinion about its usefulness.
Google Voice is a new service from Google which lets you link multiple phone numbers (home phone, work phone, mobile, etc.) to one new number of your choosing, as long as it’s available. You can search for numbers via keyword (for example your name), area code or zip code. Once you’ve chosen your new number all you have to do is link your pre-existing numbers to that one and you’ll have access to the host of cool features that Google Voice provides.
The most obvious feature Google Voice provides is call forwarding. Using the site’s settings you can set Google Voice to forward calls and messages to one of your various phones automatically. For example, you could set your work phone to only receive Google Voice calls between 9 and 5 on weekdays, or your home phone to only receive calls on weekends. You can even setup and manage certain groups of contacts and set the default phone for each – for example, if you want to direct work calls to your mobile phone you can do that.
The next feature I like is getting Google into some hot water with carriers – free SMS messaging. From the Google Voice website you can send text messages to any phone, for free. Many people have presumed that this feature alone is why the Google Voice application was denied from Apple’s App Store. You can be sure that AT&T wasn’t too excited about the idea.
One of the best features you get with Google Voice is the purest form of free visual voicemail I’ve ever seen. Voicemails sent to your Google Voice account are automatically transcribed to text and forwarded to the Google Voice website where you have an inbox for all incoming messages. The transcriptions are surprisingly accurate, but you can also playback the message from the website if there are a few missed words. As you would expect, from your Google Voice inbox you can read incoming messages as though you were reading email from your Gmail inbox. You can search for messages, leave notes to yourself and even add stars to important messages so you can come back to them later.
All said I think Google Voice is an excellent service. I can only hope that someone at Apple or AT&T decides to let the application through to the App Store. If not, you can bet that Google will work on a mobile web version of Google Voice like they’ve done with most of their other services, and we’ll get access to it anyways.
