I was lucky enough to make it into the Google Voice invite-only phase, but now I almost feel bad about it. I signed up on a whim, but I feel like the dog who caught his tail; what do I do with it now that I’ve got it? There’s people who were excited to make a hard switch to Google Voice, and even people who are writing instructions on how to do so. So far, the only people that have this number are my wife and my three friends who also happen to have Google Voice, plus a few random co-workers who’ve asked for a contact number since I got the invite. So while I haven’t used the service to its fullest extent, I’ve still got a few comments about it.
Numbers and Phones
When my phone died early in the day a few weeks ago, I was a little annoyed, as I had a few things to do after work was expecting some lunchtime calls. I was thrilled when I remembered that the people who would be calling me had my GV number, switched some settings around in the GV dashboard and was able to receive those calls on my office phone. A very useful trick indeed. The rules and settings open up worlds of options for handing calls, and I look forward to someday, maybe, putting them all to use.
Call Quality
This is the single reason (aside from my own cowardice) that I haven’t made the leap to GV full time. Call quality is crucial in my mind; there’s no point in talking to someone over the phone if you can’t accurately communicate with them. The varying levels of delay (anywhere from half a second to a second and a half) in GV calls are extremely off putting to me. As a person who does not interrupt if I can help it, it’s mortifying to me to feel like I’m interrupting every time I open my mouth. Maybe I can get used to this, but I’d much prefer it if Google would continue to perfect this service. Cell phones had delay when I first started using them, and they’ve grown beyond it (90% of time at least). Hopefully GV will do the same.
Voicemail
The first voicemail I got was far from perfect, but I got the gist of it.
hey ryan it's ### good to hear your and we'll use i actually have that service is well so we should to use it more
My buddy was letting me know that he had GV too, and that we should use it more. I’m thinking ok, this isn’t too bad, I can actually use these voicemail emails constructively. Another friend called me while I was on vacation and left this message, and the only thing I had to go on was the text.
hey calling you and actually using by google was to call me right now i've been getting an injured from soon so i can build what's that build it that'd be cool i'll talk to you later bye
Er…ok, clearly he has GV too. But…did he get injured while building something that I should build too? After listening to the message a week later, I realized that the only way I could have known what this message said was by playing a long and involved game of Mad Gab. Essentially, he was letting me know that he too had Google Voice (one pt for me!), and was planning on getting an Android phone, and the app for that would be cool. No points for anybody there, and no building either. It must have been a fluke, I said to myself.
Brian those. I'll forward sailboats Evergreen a avenue like your that you would think it was God damn rockets surgery but I think you could get to the movies back faster that payment from mate.
What? I was absolutely positive my friend was just messing with me when I saw this, but no, it was an actually message about how frustrated he was about waiting in line for 20 minutes to get a sandwich. Notice how many times the word “sandwich” appears in the transcription…interesting, no? Though I was a little surprised to hear that he had, in fact, used the phrase “rocket surgery.”
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