The Day Google Redefined What a Phone Number Means

Or perhaps a more apt title could be: "The Day Your Phone Number Became You", or maybe "Now You Need Only One Active Phone Number With Google Voice". So what's all the excitement about? Answer: currently, through direct invite, Google have now made available Google Voice - a cool new web application that can give you a new phone number that is not tied to a specific phone or location, but rather to you.

With your Google phone number, you can set up which of your phone devices ring depending on who calls your Google phone number. You can have Google Voice call a specific phone, for example, a mobile, or all of your phones at once, such as: home landline, work and mobile.

So for family calls, you might want all your phone devices to ring (depending on where you are at that time). For friends, you might choose home and cellphone. To help screen out folks that perhaps you might not want to talk to right now, you can set your Google Voice phone number to not ring anything: instead, just send the call straight to voicemail. Once in voicemail, you can perform a variety of further tasks, including blocking a caller.

When moving house, changing jobs, or changing your phone provider, you need only update the phone numbers in your Google Voice account.

Check Out Some of the Tasks You Can Complete Right Now Using Google Voice

Google Voice is much more than just a free online voicemail service courtesy of Google. For example, consider:

• Manage all your phone numbers with just one Google Voice number.
• Make a call free within continental USA and to locations in Canada.
• Announce your caller.
• Call Forwarding: accept and route phone calls to one or more of your phones: home, cellphone, work.
• Real-time monitoring: screen callers.
• Set up phone rings based on who is calling.
• Listen to a call as your caller speaks. You decide whether you want to speak then, later, or ignore and delete.
• Listen to your voicemail: have Google Voice play back your voicemail messages online or from your phone.
• Voicemail transcripts: now you can read what your voicemail says.
• Voicemail alerts: have your voicemails sent to you via email or SMS.
• Share your voicemails: you can forward voicemails to others or download your voicemails.
• Create personalized voicemail greetings: set up different greetings for different people. Examples: one for Bob, another for Jane, another for work, one for family, and so on.
• Call recording: record your calls and store online.
• Call switching: during a phone call, you can switch phones.
• Protection: block callers you don't want to hear.
• Set up a conference call for multiple callers.
• Send, receive, store SMS messages.
• Install apps for Blackberry and Android phones.
• View your Google Voice inbox from a mobile phone.
• Call GOOG-411 for directory assistance.
• Establish, set up preferences and manage Google Voice Groups.

Learn About the Basics that Google Voice Offers in About One Minute from the Video Clip Below

Discover More About Google Voice

• To go to Google Voice Home, visit: www.google.com/voice. 
• To check out the current feature list, visit: www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html. Contains some superb VAT (Video Audio Text-based content) pages.

How to Request a Google Voice Number

• To request an invitation from Google for Google Voice, go to: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/.

Find Answers to Questions About Google Voice

• To get answers to frequently asked questions and find out more about Google Voice, visit: www.google.com/support/voice/

The Future, Here Now or Coming to a Screen Near You?

In time, expect communication between other Google applications and Google Voice to develop and strengthen to provide an even more remarkable, flexible and powerful service.

For example, imagine near instant, "real time" Google Voice machine language translation (that really works) between hundreds of languages worldwide.

With barriers to communication disappearing, numerous opportunities emerge. My recommendation: enjoy the ride and as you see these wonderful enhancements to humanity emerging, ask yourself, "what else can I do with this?" For when you do, you just may start on a road that a certain Mr. Bill Gates did back in the 1970s, plus many others too.

Key tip: economic recessions create the essential turbulence that forces change, so are perfect breeding grounds for innovation and the birth of new solutions.

Key tip: visit: www.google.com/intl/en/about.html, www.googlelabs.com/ and www.google.com/intl/en/options/. With all that you have access to on those 3 pages, and especially if your funds are low, arguably, you could establish a simple "getting started" web business using only free Google tools and services. You can integrate word processor files, spreadsheets, presentations; image creation and management; website creation, website promotion, website AdWords advertising and AdSense income generation, website search engine optimization, shopping cart; email, events, calendars, groups networks, collaboration and sharing; landline, mobile and SMS phone communications; translation between hundreds of languages, mapping location finders, online research, news, and more. Amazing!

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