A huge thank you to Priscilla M for hooking me up with Google Voice – apparently its by invitation only, as well as a great summary of how it works. I am in phone heaven with this thing. Its incredible. Mark my words, when this goes public, it is going to be completely insane HUGE.

This is how it works, once you sign up, you pick a number. Mine is (area code I am not sharing yet) – “MAVENMA” – yes…many cool phone numbers available. This is like your internet phone number and when people call it, your cell (or cells or any other phones, depending on how many you have) ring, so in a sense, its sort of like call forwarding. But wait…it gets much MUCH better:

Options include:

– Conversation recording (Press 4)
– Forward to other phone(s) (*) – Caller wont know
– Different greetings for call groups lists, depending on who is calling (family, client, enemy, etc)
– Call Screening- All “unknown” callers can be asked to provide name before answering, or you can just forward them to the “this number is disconnected” recording
– Forward caller to voicemail (Press 3) (and you can listen in on the message in real time – Chime in anytime 🙂
– Do not disturb feature (all calls to voice mail)
– Block Specific Callers – They also get the “this phone number is disconnected” message.
– Spam Blocker- You can designate which calls are spam and wont hear from them again.
– Voicemail messages sent to email or text (!!)
– Google has a new feature- conversation transcription. (!)
– Call me Widget (so you can call from the internet….I think)

More to come on this!