Technology in Mind

Since Google announced their new Google Voice there have been alot of blog postings providing the history, walk-thru’s and going over the many features of Google Voice. A recent twitter search on “Google Voice” will show you that there’s ALOT of folks really wanting to try this new offering out. However as many have discovered it’s limited to the current pool of the previous GrandCentral users, although Google says that it will become available in the near future to everyone else (at least those individuals in the U.S.).

Lucky for me, I had a GrandCentral account, and after a week of checking my account a gazillion times, I finally got the message that I could upgrade to Google Voice.  I checked out the different features offered by Google, some which were already there from GrandCentral, and then the additional features that Google added.

As those of you who are versed in Google Voice know, Google lets you pick a new phone number from a pool, in your local calling area (with the exception to a few states like Hawaii, Alaska, and Maine). And then you setup your other phones that you want it to ring. It’s very customizable and can even have different incoming numbers ring only certain phones.  The idea is to give you one number that you provide to everyone and they can call that number and reach you however you’ve setup your other phones.

One of my connected phone numbers is my mobile number of course. So people can dial my Google Voice number and it will ring my cell phone number.  But if I want to call them back from my cell it suddenly becomes more complicated. Well not really, but hold on for a minute and I’ll explain. Google Voice’s idea is to give people a universal number where friends can reach you. Your friends expect that when you return their call that they’ll see your new number, not your ‘device end’ numbers. And you want them to see and use the new Google Voice number as well if you’re going to benefit from all of Google’s features. Otherwise here is what will happen.

1. You excitedly inform friends and family of your new Google Voice Number and ask them to start using this number instead of your other numbers.

2. Slowly your contacts start using the new number to reach you.  However, they notice that everytime you call your pre-existing house and cell number show up on their caller id.

3. In a very short time, they abandon your new Google Voice number and resume calling your home or cell number directly. Your Google Voice number becomes irrelevant in the structure.

On your cell phone, there are ways to dial out projecting your Google Voice number to the receiving party rather than your mobile number’s caller ID.

a.) Call your Google Voice number, press 2, then dial the recipient’s number, and press #. (This is dumb as it’s manual and you can’t even use your phone’s address book).

b.) If you’re near a computer, login to your Google Voice account and initiate the call from there. It will ring your mobile, then it will ring their phone.

c.) Use your phone’s Internet / data plan and visit http://google.com/voice/m . Login and select your contact from there.

d.) Use a calling card number that will utilize your contact list and automate solution a.) that’s listed above.

Point d.) made the most sense for me, so I sought out a solution.  I noticed that there seemed to already be a free Blackberry program.  There might be an iPhone program (if there isn’t I’m sure someone will be creating one really quick.) But I started searching for a Windows Mobile Smartphone application for my HTC S621 Excalibur (aka HTC Dash).

I learned quite a while ago that compatibility between PocketPC, Windows Mobile Professional (touch screen) and Windows Mobile Standard (non-touch screen) is nearly non-existent. Not only that, but Windows Mobile Standard seems to always come up short.  Many times there will be programs advertised for Pocket PC and/or Windows Mobile that only work on the touch screens. The developers seem to often forget to delineate as well between the touch and non-touch screens.  Anyway’s, I digress.

I found a program called Calling Card from a company called Sunnysoft that seems to work  perfectly in automating the dialouts using Google Voice in tangent with my existing contact list.  Currently I’m using their trial demo, but it seems definitely worth the purchase price of $19.00.  I’d prefer an open source or freeware  solution, but I do understand that there’s a group of people that would actually like to earn some money from their work and I can’t say I blame them.  On the other hand, I do fear that I might purchase this program and then Google introduces some free application that will make this software quickly obsolete for my purposes.