On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Funny NYPD wrote: > It seems google will enter the VOIP business soon. Anybody tried it? I have Google voice, though I don't use it much. Right now they don't really use VOIP to the end user (though I'm sure they do internally). It does everything using the telephone network. They essentially bought Grand Central and updated a few aspects of it (though there's more to come, I'm sure). You set it up to dial one or more of your regular phone numbers when someone calls your google voice number - so for instance I can set it to dial my home phone and my cell phone, and decide which to answer if I'm at home, knowing that if I'm away from home I can still get the call on my cell. You have a lot of rule based control - add people to your phone book and add them to groups. So all my family might call my google number and it'll ring all my phones (home, work, cell), but a client my only trigger my work phone. Simplifies phone number management because you give the same number to everyone, and set the rules up later just like you do in email. The other two major features are free web-based call back. I can put a widget on my website that allows someone to enter their phone number. Google will call them, and then call me, and connect us. This eliminates dial-out charges for many people (ie, it's almost like a free 800 number - since Google is originating both calls, then it doesn't use long distance minutes for home users). It also has voice transcription. If someone leaves a voice message, it's transcribed and sent to your email so you can treat voice messages just like email. You can, of course, listen to voice messages from any phone by dialing in, or via the website or your gmail account. Things I'm waiting for - number portability (they, of course, have to comply with transferring your number from them, but they can't yet transfer numbers into their network), fax send and recieve (do everything via email!), and VOIP endpoints (such as making/taking calls through my PC or iphone regardless of where I am - but magicjack would solve that issue). It'll be interesting to see what they do with it. -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist