Hello Google Gladiators,

With the following information, by Eric Griffith, I now hear Google’s voice calling me.

Enjoy,

Mark 

GRANDCENTRAL TO TURN INTO GOOGLE VOICE
by Eric Griffith

If you’ve had a GrandCentral account for a while and enjoyed giving out one phone number that would ring all your phones–even your cell phone–but feared the service would be left to die by its Google overlords: cast aside your fears. Sometime today, your GrandCentral account should morph into Google Voice. (No word on when it will become an open beta.)

Nothing should change service-wise. You’ll still get one “lifetime” call-around number and online-accessible voice mail, and you can record calls to the Internet for playback later. What is different is the interface. It’ll be more Google-y, looking something like Gmail. They’re finally adding a mobile interface, too; the Flash-heavy GrandCentral was pretty useless on an iPhone.

New features abound. Foremost among them will be the ability to make calls out through Google Voice. It’s free to U.S. numbers and will save you a bundle on international calls in particular. The pricing will be similar to that of Skype Out, such as $0.02 per minute to call France or China. It can also handle conference calls (so say good-bye to your FreeConferenceCall.com account). The old GrandCentral was strictly for calls in to you, so this could go a long way to making it easier for your friends and family to always call you back through your Google Voice number.

Other features promised include a friend setting to route calls you want and avoid those you don’t, transcription of your voicemail messages, and even SMS text messaging to the Google Voice number which is forwarded to your mobile phone.

“If you’re already using GrandCentral, over the next couple days, you will receive instructions in your GrandCentral inbox on how to start using Google Voice,” Craig Walker, Vincent Paquet, and Wesley Chan, all Google Voice product managers, wrote in a blog post. “We’ll be opening it up to others soon, so if you’d like to be notified when that happens, please send us your email address.”

Sounds like a lot, and we’ll see if it works. No reason it shouldn’t. Google took 21 months to make the update, but when does that company ever move fast on its Web services? Google Voice beta will probably be in beta until 2013.

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