I applied for Google Voice a few weeks back, (which by the way, you can do here) and got the invite yesterday morning. Eager to find out its features I quickly logged in, and found myself rather pleased.
After choosing your number and logging in you are presented with this page, which can be used to check your voicemail, place calls, send SMS messages, set your number settings, etc. It works in the exact same simple way that GMail does, so if you’ve used GMail before you will probably be able to navigate around Google Voice without any issues. Oh, and Google by default credits your account 0.10$ USD.
I tried out the calling feature from the website, and found that it works fine in Firefox. I also played around with the voice mail and SMS features. One thing to note is that your Google Voice number is textable by any U.S. phone, and it forwards these texts to whatever mobile phone you’ve linked to your account. It also provides the ability to reply through a proxy, so the person on the other side only sees your GV number.
If you look to the right, you can see a picture of how it looks for starting a GV texting session. If you start typing a number or name of a contact it will offer you auto-completed choices.
Texting in the U.S. is free, but supposedly some people have managed to text international countries without a fee. I haven’t though.
Below is a shot of me texting myself. Notice how GV replaced my mobile number with my name. (Saving me from having to blur it out)
The only problems I’ve noticed so far with GV is its lack of availability in countries other than the U.S. and the inability to text/call foreign numbers for free/monthly fee. Sure, I can understand countries outside your continent costing money, but what about the numbers in say Canada? Until this is resolved I will continue to use Skype for calling, and GV for receiving.
