• May 3rd, 2012

    Watch Out Google Voice: Hot Messaging Startup SendHub Debuts iPhone App

    IMG_1141

    Fresh on the heels of its hot $2 million seed round from Kapor Capital, Menlo Ventures, 500 Startups, Howard Lindzon’s Social Leverage fund, Eric Ries, Paul Buchheit, Jawed Karim, and others, YC-backed messaging startup SendHub is debuting its much-anticipated iPhone application today. The new app brings the services SendHub previously offered on the web to the mobile platform, including the ability to send  group messages, manage auto-responders, and add contacts, among other things.
    → Read More

    March 25th, 2011

    First Look: With Disco, Google Also Joins The Group Messaging Dance (Care Of Slide)

    As we just broke the news on, Google has a secret group messaging project that was built from within their confines: Disco. Slide, which Google bought last year, are the ones responsible for the app. And since word is that they’re allowed to run autonomously within the company as their own startup of sorts, the app probably doesn’t have anything to do with Google’s broader social strategy.

    Still, it’s a group messaging app that Google owns. So how is it?

    Well, it’s very barebones right now. We’ve been playing around the app every since we stumbled upon it, and it’s pretty safe to say at this point that it’s not yet a GroupMe/Fast Society/Kik/Beluga/textPlus-killer. But it is also still in beta, and the iPhone app design implies that it will expand beyond its current shell which is little more than a way to organize group text messages. → Read More

    March 21st, 2011

    Complete Integration Of Google Voice And 50 Million Sprint Customers, Plus 4G Nexus S

    This is the biggest news about Google Voice since the company behind it, previously called Grand Central, was acquired by Google in 2007. They’ve integrated with Sprint. What that means is you are one of Sprint’s 50 million U.S. customers, your Sprint phone number is now also a Google Voice number. And If you’re already a Google Voice subscriber, you can use that number on your Sprint phone without the need for any software. Details are at google.com/voice/sprint.

    Here’s how it works. If you are currently a Sprint customer, you can opt in to make that Sprint phone number your Google Voice phone number. This isn’t number porting, Sprint retains control of your number. They simply tell Google when you make or receive calls, and forward that call to other phones if you’ve chosen those options. Google also takes over the voicemail for the phone, and long distance calls are completed by Google at Google’s very low international rates.

    In other words, if you have a Sprint phone you can choose to make that a Google Voice phone as well. And get all the benefits of Google Voice, like having it ring to any phone you control, initiating and receiving calls from Gmail, hilarious voicemail transcriptions, etc. → Read More

    January 25th, 2011

    Google Voice Number Porting Now Live (For Real This Time)

    Last week, after nearly two years of waiting, Google Voice finally enabled number porting — the highly requested feature that lets you transfer an existing phone number to Google’s powerful telephony service. And then, just as everyone was getting excited, the feature disappeared. But now it’s back.

    Turns out last week’s number porting launch was just a test (which is why Google didn’t announce it). Given the logistical hurdles involved it’s not really surprising that Google wanted to kick the tires first, and now it looks like they’re pleased with the results. Google Voice number porting is going live today for all existing accounts, and new accounts will be able to use number porting in the next few weeks. → Read More

    January 19th, 2011

    Payback: I Just Canceled AT&T By Way Of Google Voice

    Over the past few years, I’ve been pretty vocal with my distaste for AT&T. Their complete and total incompetence when it comes to handling the iPhone in major metropolitan areas (or really any mildly crowded area) was only matched by a few of the colossal fuck-ups they’ve had with regard to some of my bills over the years. Tonight was the last straw. And it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. Thanks to the new awesome number porting feature that Google Voice is now testing, I was able to cancel my AT&T service tonight — without having to talk to a soul at AT&T.

    I just completed the process which took less than five minutes. You see, when you port an existing number over to Google Voice, it will proceed to cancel the carrier contract that is tied to that number. Google is very good about warning you that this will happen — they make you check something like six checkboxes just to make sure you really, really want to do this. And then they make you enter your current carrier account number and the like so they can complete the process. But again, it’s all super-simple. And awesome. I’m no longer an AT&T customer thanks to Google. → Read More

    January 19th, 2011

    Google Voice Is About To Take Off: Number Porting Coming Soon For $20

    We’ve been huge fans of Google Voice for quite a while now — it makes screening calls and managing multiple phones a breeze — but there’s always been a huge thorn in its side: it didn’t allow people to port their existing phone numbers over. In other words, in order to take advantage of all of Google Voice’s benefits, you’d have to get a new phone number. Now, after years of waiting, that’s finally changing: Google has quietly enabled number porting for Google Voice.

    Update: Google tells us that this is currently just a test available to some users and is not rolling out to everyone yet. However, it seems likely that a wide scale launch is coming soon. → Read More

    December 20th, 2010

    Gmail's Holiday Gift: Another Year Of Free Calling To The U.S. And Canada

    I own an iPhone. I live in San Francisco. As such, it’s basically a total crapshoot as to whether or not I’ll be able to make a phone call in the city. Skype had always been a pretty good back-up solution, but an even better one came a few months ago: Gmail Calling. And now Google has just extended the free period of the feature through 2011. Yes, through next year.

    Gmail Calling is great because it exists fully in the browser in an app that I always have open anyway: Gmail. If you use gChat, it’s right below your status message marked with a phone icon and the words “Call phone”. Hitting this launches a dialpad window within Gmail (similar to a chat window) and you can call any number in the U.S. or Canada for free. In my experience, the call quality and reliability have been excellent. → Read More

    December 14th, 2010

    Google Voice Adds Support For iPod Touch And iPad

    As we wrote a month ago, Google Voice finally arrived for the iPhone after Apple waited 16 months to approve the application. And as expected, the app was a hit with Google Voice and iPhone users. Unfortunately, at the time of launch, Google Voice for the iPhone didn’t support the iPod Touch or the iPad. So today, Google is announcing a new version of Google Voice that will work on both iOS devices.

    The new version of the app essentially allows you to use all the features of its iPhone cousin, including the ability to read your voicemail and send and receive text messages. Of course, you cannot make cell calls from the iPad and the iPod Touch. But you can use Google Voice’s Click2Call feature to initiate Google Voice calls with one of your phones. → Read More

    November 22nd, 2010

    Google Voice Goes Down Yet Again

    Let the Fail Whale jokes begin.

    I’ve been using Google Voice on a daily basis for around a year now, and the last month has been by far the worst in terms of connectivity issues.  Right now, it looks like the service is having yet another outage — both Michael Arrington and I are having problems, and other users on Twitter are having them as well. Outbound calls ring endlessly (and sometimes get a “This Call Cannot Be Completed” error message); inbound calls don’t get through.

    We’ve reached out to Google to find out how many people are being affected and when we can expect a fix.

    Update: As of 4:10 PM PST Google says the problems have been resolved. Looks like there were at least 90 minutes of downtime. → Read More

    November 16th, 2010

    16 Months Later, Say Hello To Google Voice For The iPhone. It Was Worth The Wait.

    Over the past few years, there has been no shortage of developers complaining about how long Apple has taken to approve their iPhone applications. But few have waited as long as Google for the Google Voice application. But today brings great news: the wait is over.

    Yes, the app is real, it’s approved, and it should be live at this link. The official Google Voice for the iPhone is here. And it’s wonderful. Yes, it was even worth that insane wait. → Read More

    November 2nd, 2010

    Google Voice Is Having Serious Trouble Making Outbound Calls. This Is Bad. (Updated)

    If you want to be a phone company you can’t go dead. Ever. People rely on their mobile phones for everything these days, so when calls aren’t going through it’s a really big deal. And as far as we can tell, Google Voice is currently having some serious issues.

    Both Michael Arrington and I use Google Voice exclusively for our phone calls. And this morning, we simply can’t place calls: we’ll dial a number, hear the familiar rings as we wait for our contact to answer, and… nothing. The phone just keeps ringing forever — it never even gets to the recipient’s voicemail. The worst part is that most people probably don’t even realize that anything’s wrong, because when you initiate a call  it sounds like everything is working fine because you still hear those familiar rings.

    Update, 12:15PM PST: After over an hour of issues, Google says that the problem should be resolved. → Read More

    October 4th, 2010

    Yap Transcribes Voicemails On Your iPhone For Free

    Listening to voicemails is a huge waste of time. That’s why apps that transcribe your voicemail to text are a godsend. The new Yap Voicemail app is now available for the iPhone. You route your voicemails through Yap. It transcribes them for you using only speech-to-text technology (no humans), which allows it to offer the service for free (with ads at the bottom).

    The transcriptions are not perfect—it mistook “Leena” for “Nina” and “drafts” for “trust” in one message, but Yap gets enough of the words right to figure out what the message is about. And you can always play the message in the app to listen to exactly what was said. Every time you get a message, a notification pops up with the name of the caller and the beginning of the message. Since it is completely automated, the message appears almost immediately after it is left on your voicemail, just like a text message. You can respond via email, SMS, or a phone call right from the app. → Read More

    September 18th, 2010

    Google Voice On The iPhone Comes Full Circle As Apple Accepts GV Mobile+

    This is a post I’ve looked forward to writing for a long time — and I’m surprised that I’m even getting the chance. In July 2009, we broke the news that Apple had banned Google Voice from the iPhone. But it hadn’t just blocked Google’s official application — it had also removed two third-party applications that had already been live on the App Store for months: GV Mobile, which was created by Sean Kovacs; and VoiceCentral, developed by Riverturn.

    Of course, Kovacs and Riverturn hadn’t done anything wrong — they’d simply gotten caught in the crossfire of the growing rivalry between Apple and Google. Fast forward to today: nearly fourteen months after it was unceremoniously removed from the App Store, Apple has finally reinstated one of the applications that started it all. You can download the new version of GV Mobile+ right here. The application has been available in Canada most of the day, but only hit the US store minutes ago. → Read More

    September 7th, 2010

    Google Voice now sending out missed call alerts via e-mail

    If I learned anything from the crappy 2008 remake of the marginally less crappy 2004 japanese horror flick One Missed Call, it’s that if I miss a phone call, I will probably die. Fortunately, Google doesn’t want me to die. That was their original original slogan, after all: Don’t be evil, and don’t wish death upon people. That was too long, so they shortened it to “Don’t be evil”, which was in turn shortened by removing all words and instead just having Larry and Sergey show up to press events on rollerblades. → Read More

    August 30th, 2010

    Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now

    I think I liked Google Voice better back when it was hard to get an invitation. Back then it worked most of the time, and the infrequent outages were tolerable given how useful the service is overall. But over the last week the service has become spotty at best, and unusable at times. Given that I ported my phone number to Google I don’t have much choice but to soldier on in the short term – but Google needs to figure this out fast or they’ll lose me as a user.

    What happened? In June Google Voice opened up for anyone to use, and there was clearly a surge of new people trying out the service. For the most part it weathered that storm. But last week Google launched Google Voice for Gmail, allowing users to make and receive calls right from the browser. It’s awesome. Truly useful. 1 million calls were made from Gmail in 24 hours.

    Uh oh. That’s when the trouble started. About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt. → Read More

    August 28th, 2010

    Phone Numbers Are Dead, They Just Don't Know It Yet

    Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Nikhyl Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow.

    Is it conceivable that one of our greatest inventions, the phone number, is about to face extinction?

    Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this year, when asked if Facebook would be around in 100 years, as long as Ma Bell has been around, Zuckerberg responded, “I don’t know. But I don’t know how long telephones will be around for.”  Will they be around for ten more years? I’ll go even further. It may not even take 5 years for the phone service, as we know it, to meet its demise.

    Who’s going to lead the charge?  Voice on Gmail and Skype are just the beginning.  What are Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft doing?  As AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Google spent this summer hashing out plans for world domination, it seems that Facebook is best positioned to strike the fatal blow against our beloved carriers.  And it starts with those phone digits. → Read More

    August 25th, 2010

    Inside Google's Mysterious Voice Pods, Five Are Ready For Action (TCTV)

    This morning, Google officially unveiled its Voice/Gmail integration, which will allow users to make Google Voice calls from the browser. It’s a pretty nifty service that is gaining traction in the TechCrunch SF newsroom. Another product we’re eyeing? That shiny London-esque phone booth with the “vintage” 1957 phone that makes free domestic and long distance Google voice calls.

    I dropped by Google’s SF office to get a full tour from Jason Toff, the product marketing manager for Google Voice who spearheaded the phone booth project. (See video tour ahead). According to Toff, Google has already manufactured five phone booths and is zeroing in on several high-trafficked venues. No contracts have been finalized yet but he expects Arizona State University will be one of the first (with its student body of 54,000 strong).

    Free Goog-wear alert: Google has also given us 7 Voice T-shirts for readers who have always wanted to look like a living, breathing Google icon. We have several tees in size M and L. → Read More

    August 25th, 2010

    Google Voice Integrated Into Gmail. Make And Receive Calls From The Browser

    We were excited when we got our hands on an unlaunched version of Google Voice for the desktop, which let users make and receive calls via a soft phone on their computer. We hear that software is still on ice, though, and won’t be launched any time soon. But it probably doesn’t matter – today Google Voice is being integrated right into the browser via Gmail. It’s amazingly good – I know because I’ve been testing it for the last few days.

    Just download the Google Talk plugin for your browser and you can then make calls to any U.S. or Canadian phone number. And if you already use Google Voice you can make those calls anywhere else, too, for a very low per minute charge. The feature is fully integrated into Google Voice, which means you can set Google Voice to receive calls in Gmail, and use your Google Voice contact book. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

    Call quality is very, very good – comparable to Skype. See video below of test calls we performed. And more screenshots below: → Read More

    July 22nd, 2010

    Making Calls On Google Voice Just Got Snappier

    Google Voice is great, especially if you’re on a mobile platform that offers a native Voice application (namely Android or BlackBerry). But if you’ve been using the service on a regular basis, you may have run into an odd issue: sometimes when you go to actually call someone there’s a lag, as if the phone isn’t altogether sure what it’s supposed to do when you tap on the ‘Call’ button next to a contact’s name. Today, Google is getting rid of that lag in its native applications.

    As Google details in its blog post, that pause was due to Google Voice making a small data request to Google’s servers whenever you initiated a call, which would return the number the application was supposed to dial. That works well enough when you have a decent 3G or EDGE connection, but it can also lead to annoying timeouts and pauses when you don’t. The new version of the Voice applications fixes this by assigning a unique phone number to your contacts, bypassing the need to initiate a data connection. In other words, your outbound calls should be faster now. → Read More

    July 5th, 2010

    Get Your Virtual Pen Out And Sign The Google Voice Desktop Petition

    As soon as everyone got to actually see the unreleased Google Desktop application in action, they wanted to have it.

    The only problem is this isn’t just about waiting until Google finishes it off and ships it. There’s a real possibility that Google will never release a Skype-like soft phone for the desktop – they clearly want to build these types of applications in the browser. But the experts we’ve spoken with, including Skype execs, say browser technology just isn’t ready to run high quality VoIP calls at scale. Even with advancements in HTML5, it’s still at least a year away, say people who know: → Read More

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