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.

Today’s voicemail service could learn a thing or two from the simplicity of the answering machine. That’s where YouMail comes in. Read on to see how this new service is changing the voicemail game.

I heard about YouMail through the wonderful Lifehacker blog. I decided to check it out, and I’m glad I did. In less than 5 minutes, I was set up to use YouMail voicemail instead of the default Verizon offering.

The list of features that YouMail offers is too long to list here, so I’m just going to rattle off some of the things that were important to me.

1. YouMail does not require a new number.
2. YouMail makes it easy on the caller (message, beep, done).
3. YouMail can send emails or texts when you get a new voicemail. (including an attached mp3, if you so desire)
4. YouMail allows custom messages for different people.
5. YouMail allows uploaded mp3s for your voicemail messages.
6. YouMail is free*

So it’s pretty awesome, in my opinion. I’ve really just started using it, so I’ll provide an update down the road to see how I like it in a month or so.

* The only thing YouMail charges for is message transcription. For a reasonable price, real people will listen to your message and transcribe it. The results are much better than a computer (as long as you trust the YouMail transcribers).

Do you use a custom voicemail service? Tell us about it below.

The post YouMail – Voicemail Done Right first appeared on Techerator.