Do you Google?

If you don't already have a Google account, you might want to consider getting one after reading this!

Have you heard of Google Voice?
If not, I suspect you soon will. Google Voice is currently an invitation-only service - that means you cannot immediately sign up for Google Voice, but have to request an invitation. I requested one a few weeks ago and received my invite this week.

So what is it, what does it do?
During the setup process, I had to choose a phone number for my account (I chose a California number) and agree to a typical Terms of Service Agreement. After that I configured my profile by adding a couple of numbers for phones I regularly use. I can now share this phone number and have all calls to that number ring one or all of the numbers in my profile. Kinda cool but so what, right?

Well, for those within the local calling area for the number I chose, it allows them to call me without incurring long distance charges. Not bad, but it gets better. In addition, when logged into my Google Voice account I can enter any number in the United States, select which phone I want to use, and press a button to connect the call. For example, tonight I did this to place a call to a Colorado number and connect it to my home phone in Tallahassee. Upon doing so, my home phone rang. When I picked up the line, I heard a couple of ring tones, then the person I was calling in Colorado answered. To summarize, I used the internet to setup a call (that showed up on Caller ID as a California number) between Colorado and Florida - and talked as long as I wanted to for free (e.g. no long distance rates)!

Google Voice is cool in other ways, too!
Google Voice supports SMS, so you can use this number to send and receive standard text messages. This might be useful for those coupon code subscriptions via SMS (?).

Google Voice also has some cool voice mail features. Besides the standard features, you can set it up so that a text transcript of all voice mails is sent to you either as an email or a text message. You can also screen calls by listening in on a voice mail message as it is being recorded, and choose to break in if you want.

Is it Web 2.0?
By the definitions we have been using, probably not - there really is not much that is collaborative about using the service, and I don't think the code is open source. Even so, it is a pretty amazing technology that could have a huge impact on the long distance industry. There have been some recent reports in the news about Google Voice enabled applications being removed from Apple's App Store. Speculation abounds on whether Apple or AT&T is behind this...