Google Voice, the popular communication service originally known as GrandCentral before it was acquired by Google in 2007, has been invite-only for the past year.  Demand for these hard-to-come-by invites was high – so high that they were being sold on eBay for as much as $200 – but Google just opened the service to the public, no invite necessary.

So what is Google Voice?  Many things.  When you sign up for Google Voice, you’ll get a fully-functional phone number that can act as an intermediary between you and your callers.  When somebody calls your Google Voice number, you will be notified on your phone and will have access to call screening, conference calling, custom responses, and a Gmail-like voicemail inbox.

If you’re like us, we simply wanted to keep our existing mobile numbers and use Google Voice solely for its fantastic voicemail features.  This gives you free transcriptions of voicemails (although they can be pretty terrible, as you’ll see in the screenshot below), and can be received via text message or with Google’s free app for Android (free visual voicemail – take that, Verizon!).  All you need to do is forward your phone’s voicemail to your Google Voice number.

Here are just a few Google Voice features:

• Mobile web app
• Gmail integration
• Use Google Voice with an existing number
• Voicemail transcriptions
• SMS
• Personalized greetings

Check out the video below for a little more of what Google Voice is about.

Now that Google Voice is free, give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.  I (Evan) used to be outspoken about my hatred of voicemail, but since I switched my voicemail to Google Voice, I’m all for it.

[via Google Voice Blog]

The post Google Voice – Now Available For Everyone! first appeared on Techerator.

However, when I walked into work on Tuesday, I saw Evan and Dustin setting up their phones to take advantage of Google Voice’s voicemail using their current carrier.  Suddenly, Google Voice became very useful to me!

Essentially, you can now use Google Voice’s voicemail service instead of your standard carrier’s system, allowing you to take advantage of the robust voicemail service without giving your friends a completely new number.  I’m not very savvy with my phone (I just use it for calling and texting) so at first glance, I thought it would be a bit challenging to set up. In usual Google fashion, though, they made it deceptively easy!

Setting up Google Voice for Voicemail

The first step is to log into your Google Voice account (if you don’t have one yet, you can request an invite on the Google Voice site or from a friend who already has an account).

After you have logged in, proceed to the main settings page by clicking on the Settings link in the upper right.  After you’ve added at least one device to your account, you should now see a link to “Activate Google voice mail for this phone.” Click it!

That will pop up a window to help you enable forwarding on your phone. Select your carrier and follow the instructions.

After you “call” the provided number, it will set your phone to forward to Google Voice if you don’t answer your phone.  Once you’re done calling the number, ask a friend to call your phone and have them leave a voicemail.  If everything went smoothly they should get forwarded to your Google voicemail instead of your regular carrier’s!

Additional Tweaking

If you are content with the default settings, you’re done! If not, go back to the main settings page and tweak the voicemail settings to your liking. Personally, I have it send me a text to notify me when I get a new voice mail. Not only does it serve the function of notifying me I got a message but it also contains the transcription of the message. I find this to be very helpful because if I’m in class or at work and I can’t answer my phone, I can still get the message and decide if I need to excuse myself to respond.

The only problem I’ve run into so far is initially, it will ring way to many times before going to voicemail because it rings X number of times on your phone, and then X number of times on Google before going to voicemail. To fix that, check out this article written by Evan.

I am just beginning to explore all the possibilities, and I hope you will join me as we figure out just how useful this new feature really is. So far, at least, I really enjoy Google’s voicemail because it allows me to see the content of messages in situations where I couldn’t use my phone to check.

What do you like best about the new Google voice mail?  Share it with us in the comments!

The post How to Replace Your Boring Voicemail with Google Voice first appeared on Techerator.

Here’s how it plays out:

– Call initiated –
[ Phone rings 4-5 times ]
– Call forwarded to Google Voice –
[ Google Voice rings 2-3 additional times ]
– Google Voicemail takes the call –

That gives you a grand total of up to 8 rings, which is a long time to be waiting on the other line.  Here’s a quick-and-easy solution to removing the extra rings from Google Voice:

Note: This guide is only for users who have replaced their voicemail with Google Voice.  If you’re using Google Voice to forward calls to multiple numbers, this will mess that up.

Step 1: Log into Google Voice and click ‘Settings’ in the top right corner of the window.

Step 2: Click the ‘Edit’ button under your current cell phone number.

Step 3: Click ‘Show advanced settings’.

Step 4: Under Forwarding Options, select ‘Go straight to voicemail’.  Click Save and repeat this process for any other phones you have in Google Voice.

From my testing, my phone now goes seamlessly to my Google voicemail without any extra rings in between.  The nice part about this trick is that you’ll still be able to send/receive SMS to your phone (which would be lost if you simply removed the phone from the forwarding list).

Have any tricks for getting the most out of Google Voice?  Share them in the comments!

The post How to Prevent Extra Rings using Google Voice as Voicemail first appeared on Techerator.