grandcentral

Google's new Google Voice has a few rough edges but for many users, it could be a life-changing experience.

The service, a relaunch of GrandCentral, which Google bought in 2007, allows you to choose a local number, which will simultaneously ring up to six phones such as your cell phone, home phone, office phone, and the phone at that vacation home that most of us can only dream about.

In addition to forwarding your calls, it also takes voice messages that you can listen to on the Web, from a phone, or read, thanks to a new feature that … Read more

In 2007, Google acquired GrandCentral and just re-launched it as Google Voice. The service, which gives users an incoming number that can be forwarded to as many as six phones, allows you to screen calls and record them, and transcribes your voice mail into e-mail and text messages. I spoke with GrandCentral co-founder and now Google executive Craig Walker about the service's features as well privacy issues and whether Google will ever make any money from it.

SAN FRANCISCO--Google plans to unveil a service called Google Voice on Thursday that indicates Google wants to do with your telephone communications what companies such as Yahoo have done with e-mail.

Google Voice, the new version of the GrandCentral technology Google acquired in July 2007, has the potential to make the search giant a middleman in an important part of people's lives, telephone communications. With the service, people can pick a new phone number from Google Voice; when others call it, Google can ring all the actual phones a person uses and handle voice mail.

The old version could let people centralize telephone services, screen their calls, and listen to voice mail over the Web. But the new version offers several significant new features, though. Google now uses its speech-to-text technology to transcribe voice mail, making it possible to search for particular words. Gmail's contacts now is used to instruct Google Voice how to treat various callers. And Google Voice now can send and receive SMS text messages and set up conference calls. … Read more

Spanish news site Expansion reported Tuesday that Google plans to launch GrandCentral, an online voice communications service, in Spain sometime during 2009. According to the report, Google will allow voice calls to be placed for free, but each will be linked to the voicemail service. Currently, GrandCentral is only available in the U.S.

UGO Entertainment and its parent company, Hearst Corp., announced late Tuesday that it will acquire 1UP.com and its associated sites, GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com, and GameTab.com. A release from UGO asserts that with 1UP and the affiliated sites joining its own network of gaming … Read more

Google has released a new application for Mac users called "Vocito" that puts GrandCentral calling right on your desktop. It integrates with OS X's address book, Automater app, and third-party applications like Blacktree's QuickSilver to let you start a GrandCentral-powered call no matter what you're doing on your machine.

Similar to JaJah and Jaxtr, Vocito's system for setting up calls involves you first picking who you want to call, then choosing which one of your GrandCentral-connected phones you want it to be connected from. You then hit dial and GrandCentral does the rest. It'… Read more

While GrandCentral may have been stealing headlines lately, there's another suffix-sharing phone call management service called RingCentral that can make small businesses look and function like larger ones with some pretty neat telephonic tomfoolery. The service has been around since early 2004, and today is introducing a slew of VoIP plans called DigitalLine that give users the option to use VoIP instead of, or on top of their existing landlines.

So what can you do with RingCentral? Small business owners will love it, since you can set up a ridiculously extensive set of rules to handle incoming calls, or reroute them on the fly with a virtual phone call manager called SoftPhone. The idea is to take a single or multiline setup and spread it out intelligently, while putting all the options online for you to manage and tweak while away from your office.

Like GrandCentral, you can set up calls to be routed to different phones or line extensions, there are also handy business-centric settings to tweak the response people get when they call at off-business hours. For fans of GrandCentral's multiphone ring system, RingCentral has also gone the extra step of letting you add three-digit passwords to an incoming phone call to keep unintended pickups from happening. This feature actually stemmed out of users wanting to keep their children from answering a business phone call when they had forgotten to turn off the home forwarding options off, or couldn't get to their own phone in time.

The new VoIP implementation is fairly straightforward. All incoming calls can be set to be received via VoIP, letting you receive and manage phone calls while away from your landline. You can also get various minute packages to use VoIP to make outgoing calls, including an all-you-can-eat plan of outgoing VoIP for around $25/month. In contrast to consumer VoIP services like Vonage, Skype, or Comcast's DigitalVoice, RingCentral isn't aiming at cheap outgoing long distance providers, as much as the multi-line business crowd who's looking for a way to handle several lines without the hardware or staffing.

For a shot of the call log interface, click the read more link below.

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Google has just announced the much-rumored acquisition of communications service GrandCentral. TechCrunch broke the news about the acquisition last week and is now reporting the deal is rumored to be somewhere in the range of $50 million. Details about final price and terms are confidential.

This is Google's latest move into the telecommunications market and one of their biggest. For current GrandCentral customers, service will go uninterrupted. For users interested in signing up, GrandCentral is now limiting sign-ups to invitation only.

The other big change in place as of today is GrandCentral's RingShare service. Previously, users were able … Read more

Google is in talks to buy GrandCentral, which offers a way to merge all phone calls into one number, according to TechCrunch.

"We have a high degree of confidence that the deal has actually been closed. We are trying to nail down the acquisition price," writes TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who speculates that Google could use the technology with its Gmail and Google Talk applications.

Google representatives said they do not comment on rumor or speculation and GrandCentral did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Category: Communications

GrandCentral is a catchall voice mail and messaging service that you can monitor right in your browser. When you sign up, you get a new phone number. When people call this number, the system takes their names (the first time they call; after that, it remembers), and rings all of your telephones for you at the same time--your desk, your mobile, your home--and lets you pick up the call from any of them.

GrandCentral allows you to reject calls after you hear the name of the person calling; define which of your phones ring based on who is … Read more