As a counter point to the earlier review of the iPhone, this week we’re looking at something you can’t get on the iPhone: Google Voice.
A while ago, there used to be a service called Grand Central. This was bought out by Google and re-named Google Voice. And then Google started adding new capabilities to it. GV is another of Google’s projects that is eternally in beta. And like many of the others, if you can get in, it is pretty darn useful. Right now, Google Voice is invitation only, which means that you need to find someone with a Google Voice number and ask them to send you an invite. If you can’t find anyone, or your friends have all run out of invites, you can also go to https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ and ask Google if they’d be nice enough to send you an invite. And if you’re not sure if you want one or not, you can look at the list of features at http://www.google.com/voice. The price, however, is right: Google Voice is free, unless you use it for international calls. And even then there are considerable savings, depending on where you are calling and for how long.
