Google Voice

An emerging product of the expanding line of free Google web apps is Google Voice.  Currently in closed beta and can only be obtained via invite requests directly to Google, Google Voice is a new way of call forwarding.

A Google Voice user is assigned a regular telephone number, free of charge at the time of this writing.  When people call this number, the Google Voice user can assign which phone numbers to forward that calls to.  Say I want my parents to be able to reach me on my cell phone and my house phone.  I just give them my Google Voice number and have them call that without having to worry about calling me on my house phone first before trying my cell phone because Google Voice will make both the house and cell phones ring.  If I have a rather chatty girlfriend and she calls me on my house phone, I can tell Google Voice to reroute the call to my cell phone and she would never know the difference.  Then I could just step out of the house and she can continue to prattle on about how her fight with her B.F.F. Jill.

Another feature of Google Voice is its free SMS service.  Without having to pay for a texting service, Google Voice gives mobile users free texting that's extremely similar to regular texting.  People simply text you by entering your Google Voice number and it'll show up.  The downside is that Google Voice is not a traditional cell phone service provider, so you would not be able to use certain texting features that require you to input your cell phone service provider.  Even if you don't want to use the Google Voice interface to text, you can also text by email and be notified of new texts with your Gmail email account.

Google Voice also records and transcribes any voicemails that come in.  If I miss a call, Google Voice lets me know just like a regular cell phone would.  However, the key difference is Google Voice can play back the voicemail as a MP3 file so I can easily hear it as many times as I want.  It can also attempt to translate the speech to text so I can easily read the voicemail as I would hear it.

And all these services of Google Voice can be modified through any data-enabled phone or through the Google Voice website.  There, users can have micromanage control of the greatest little detail of how Google Voice handles incoming phone calls: what time certain people can call you, customized greetings tailored to a particular contact or group of contacts, whether or not you want the system to screen your calls for you, which phones to ring at what times when a particular someone calls you, etc.

And most services is free.  So far the only charges I have seen is for international calls.

For iPod touch/iPhone users: to truly mimic a real texting plan, have Google Voice forward SMS messages to your Gmail, then set up Gmail with a filter to forward all texts to your Textfree email address.  The Textfree iPhone application has a lite version that is free of charge and supports free unlimited incoming texts.  If you turn on push notifications for Textfree, any incoming Google Voice SMS will be routed to your textfree email address and provided that you have wifi or 3G access, you would get instant notification of new texts without having to check your email.

Update: A friend who followed my directions made me realized that Textfree only serves as an alert system.  You cannot send out Google Voice text messages with Textfree.  You would have to use the Google Voice website or reply the Google Voice email to respond.