Google Voice is a phone/message/voicemail management service by Google. The service provides one U.S. phone number free of charge to each user account. You can download Android/iPhone apps to make/receive a call or send/receive a text message from any carrier for free within U.S.
Users in the U.S. may place outbound calls to international destinations at very cheap rates. For example, a call to china is only 1 cent per minute. Today I will introduce a very cool feature in google voice called “Call Forwarding”.
Google voice allows users to link their existing phone numbers to their Google voice account. You can link as many phone numbers as you want. You can then configure the service so that all linked phone numbers simultaneously ring when your Google Voice number is called. What does that mean? It means you can give your Voice number to your friends or customer just once. When they call your Voice number, you can pick up the call from any phone you linked to your account. Even if you need to change your cell phone number in the future it’s no problem. You don’t need to call all your friends or customers to let them know. You simply need link your new phone number to your Google Voice account. Your friends and customers will still be able to reach you by calling your Voice number. They don’t even have to know you changed your cell phone number.
Google also provides a Google Voice API for developers; you can initiate a call with the API and even specify which linked phone you want to ring. An application on your company or personal website with this API and you can add a “call us” or “call me” button. When user clicks it, it can prompt for user’s phone number. Once user confirms, your website can initiate a call using the Google API and ring your linked phone numbers without exposing your phone number at all. The Google Voice API also allows you send/receive text messages which I will talk about in my next blog.
I have personally used the Google Voice API for a personal project and here at Palm Beach Software Design, we have used a similar API to handle sending out SMS messages for one of our customers. We take pride in being able to identify the right solutions for your needs by keeping up with the latest technologies.
