OK folks, our phone number can now finally really live the mobile life along with us. Google has acquired grandcentral.com which lets you pick a phone number anywhere. When you get a call to that grandcentral number it will automatically relay that call to any and all of your "real" phones (cell or land line) simultaneously. It also lets you have just one single vmail box for all your phone numbers and will also pre-announce who's calling. All of this can be accessed via your phone OR the web. What could be better for us mobile folks!

Best of all it is FREE!

Yes, I have a grandcentral number and it does really work...


-- Edited by RVDude at 15:31, 2007-12-18

OK, I will go and check this site out, but if you could give me a brief overview I would appreciate it.
I already have a cell phone and it already has voice mail that picks up when I am not available.  What does this do that my current service does not?

RVDude wrote:
Best of all it is FREE!

Yes, I have a grandcentral number and it does really work...

---

I set up a grand central account about two weeks ago in anticipation of fulltiming.  Basically you can have one number and it will ring any phone.  It can screen callers and do different things based on who is calling.  You can screen or record calls, as well as get email notifications of who is calling.  Just seems like a good easy way to centralize call management.

As far as I know it is still in google beta, meaning that you need to be invited to set up an account.  I had a friend who works for google invite me, but I now have some invitations I can give out if anyone wants one, just let me know.

Here is a link to their feature list:
http://www.grandcentral.com/home/features

-- Bruce

Ditto everything Bruce said plus, this phone number (designed to be your phone number for life) can be set to ring any number of "real" phones based on who is calling. Hence if a family member is calling maybe ring both DH & DW cells, if work send it directly to Vmail, if DW friend ring only her phone, etc.... You can also put a call me button on any web site (see mine) and take calls that way - my web calls go directly to a web call Vmail. On top of that you can listen to all Vmails from any phone OR online. Best of all, you'll never need to change phone numbers again. And yes, they even have a phone spam filter too.


Try it out, completely free and impacts NOTHING or even changes anything on your current phones, if you don't like it just don't give out your grandcentral phone number. I'd be happy to send invites, just PM me or hey, call me from my web site and tell me what email to send your invite to. And to be clear, I can NOT see your caller ID from the web call as the "keep number private box" is automatically checked.

-- Edited by RVDude at 20:57, 2007-12-18

RV Dude,
If you have any invites left, I would appreciate one. Please send it to
khoenig@yahoo.com

Thank you.

k&s: done...

I'm in the process of signing up now, thank you. But I wanted to mention one caution...if you are a Verizon user and count on the free Verizon to Verizon calls, if they are forwarded from your GrandCentral number, it won't be a free call.

We ran into this at the realty I worked for. We put into place a VoIP system that allowed the receptionist to ring their extension and have it automatically transfer to their phones. They quickly realized that incoming calls that might be from someone on their Verizon cell were no longer considered free.