Google Voice: New, Improved, & Still Disappointing

It's been months since you posted this, I am curious how things are working for you now as there have been some more GV developments. I just stumbled across this article/vlog today.

For me, I love that Google Voice allowed me to create a phone number. I live in a small town and my cell phone, along with nearly everyone else, is long distance number. I was able to create a local GV number and give it out as my cell phone number. People can call me from home without using long distance or cell phone minutes. Plus, when I am at the office, I don't get good reception so I was able to link my GV phone to my office phone.

Where I live, the accents are thick (Southwestern part of Virginia) so transcripts are sometimes funny, sometimes awful.

Google Voice has been a great tool, that is still in beta and not open to the public yet, so I don't know if there is really all that much room to complain.

1) Sarah, it's your OWN fault that Google Voice does't work. If you had bothered reading how it works, you would have noticed that the Voice number becomes your NEW cell phone number

2) Blame apple for the lack of an iPhone app. Us jailbroken iPhone users DO get GVoice in a nicely wrapped iPhone app available FOR FREE on Cydia

3)I will PAY you to find me a speech to text program that can understand whoopadeedoo

I'm sorry, but again, your coverage of Google Voice simple makes you seem amateur and uninformed (and as your other videos show, you're clearly not!). There are legit faults with Voice that still need to be ironed out, but those faults can only be found if a reporter actually uses the service as intended

You wouldn't be giving up the visual voicemail if Apple had allowed the Google Voice Application to be in the App Store.

I'm so gonna drunk dial you now Sarah.

Sara... Long time listener first time call... err... commenter... anyhew... I agree with your opinion, especially giving up my visual voice mail. What I hope is that like most Google products, this one just needs a little more time to cook before true goodness occurs.

Keep up the good work :)

Great vid, Sarah. You made me laugh with that translation! Thanks.

Thanks for the info Sarah!!

Saddened by your video. Seriously considering unsubscribing. :(

?? does not work for you.

works for me! :D

The big perks for me with Google Voice are that you can keep your real cell phone number private and ring multiple phones at once. I work a lot between a regular job, and a small business I own, so between these features, GV really alleviates any need for a secondary cell phone. Plus, the ability to check voicemails on the web is a very handy feature, even though the transcription is horrendous.

I've been using Google Voice with my iPhone for the past week. It's been great! While I did like my visual voicemail the way iPhone/AT&T present it, I don't miss it as much as I thought I would. Here's why: I have Google send me an email for every voicemail and text message sent to my GV number. So my email IS my visual voicemail. Plus, as mentioned in previous posts, now I can stop paying AT&T for their Unlimited SMS option. GV is definitely not flawless, but it is worth trying out. And it will continue to get better ...

I like when technology pretends to be human and doesn't make sense. Like email spam poetry.

Or when you are texting and the autocomplete finishes your thoughts for you, and a phrase like "Brian is at home" becomes "Asian hq bu good"

Google voice's speech transliterator is yet another thing that makes no sense. YAY!

The real feature for GV is small business. So many telcos have SMBs over a barrel with terrible features. These people can't afford a PBX with forward and follow features. They could hook up a GV number, including their established line, and allow for forwards to any number, without the need to put 5 different numbers on their business cards. This is really a killer feature, and visual voicemail won't matter to those people.

I cannot find out why one says it is 'still disappointing,' since the featured video here is disabled on my work station. But I wouldn't say Google Voice is a disappointment. Only far from it.

What can we do with it then?

Before any, it's worth noting that when you make a call using Google Voice, a person who receives your call sees your actual handset's number on his/her caller ID screen, not your Google Voice's number.

So, with a bare-minimum data plan, you would be able to (on your cell phone):

1. make free U.S. phone calls (Google Voice + one number-unlimited calling plan),
2. send free text messages,
3. read fruggeri's post above,

And you know, it is an open source.

Sadly, I don't think Apple is going to allow full-fledged Google Voice on their handset system soon, which means current non-jailbroken iPhone users are not able to do any of those Google Voice features except a few.

Let me know how my voicemail came out

Here's the best feature of Google Voice so far that I have found:

Let's say you are traveling internationally, and you happen to have AT&T and an iPhone. If you are not in a roaming area or don't want to accept a call, did you know that AT&T will charge you international rates for all the connection time it takes to give the outgoing greeting AND the voicemails people leave you?

The way to get around it, is that just before you leave the country, turn on the autoforward voicemail to Google Voice, and then when you get anywhere near wi-fi or at an internet cafe, you can check your email for the (poor) transcript as well as listen to your voicemails without charge. Just make sure you disable that once you get back to the US.

I did this earlier this year in Europe and it worked great!
-Franco

I get a big kick out of the voice-mail transcripts! ( in a FAIL kind of way) I've really only given the number to my family and tell them to leave me messages and we play a game of whose came out the most insane. I haven't honestly given it much of a try either, I really should, I still have a good feeling about it.

Does it make me an old fasioned hippie to mainly contact people over e-mail? Speaking is way too much effort, and I hardly sound like Sean Connery!

The main feature about your Google Voice number is that it isn't attached to a single phone or location. So when someone dials your Google Voice number you can have your cell phone, your house phone, your work phone, or any other phone ring. Or you can have all those phones ring at once, or have different ones ring depending on who's calling.

I say wait until some of the security concerns are addressed and Apple decides to allow a native iPhone app, then give it another try.

I honestly haven't used Google Voice much for some of the same reasons you mentioned. For some reason my number is firmly stuck in my head, but I haven't given it out to many folks (more out of laziness than anything, since my friends all have my cell number already). Haven't run into the issue with voicemail (even though I have the iPhone) mostly because I don't screen calls that often and I have my cell near enough to answer a disturbingly high percentage of the day. :) I think if you have multiple phones (someone like Leo who tests a bunch of cell phones) or if you like sending SMS through the computer then GV might be more useful. I know I'll find a use for it at some point - just need to figure out what...

This is me being patient and waiting sweetly!