Google Voice was GrandCentral before Google acquired that company back in 2007. Like most Google acquisitions it took a long time to fully rebuild the service on Google’s infrastructure, and even today Google Voice is still in private beta.
But lots of changes are coming. Google Voice should roll out publicly shortly. Users may be able to port their existing phone numbers to Google if they… → Read More
When I first signed up for GrandCentral a few years ago, I lived in a different city. As such, I had a different area code. And that was fine until I moved and Google, which bought GrandCentral in 2007 and subsequently put it on lockdown, prohibited me from changing it. I didn’t think much of it until my GrandCentral account magically transformed into a Google Voice account a few months ago… → Read More
One of the few necessary evils that accompanies the uber-cool recently launched Google Voice service (which was officially released in March) is the necessity to convert all of your numbers (cell, landline, office) to one number. It can be an annoying and daunting task to change your cell phone number, especially if you are reliant on your cell for business and personal communications. Mobile… → Read More
GrandCentral, a phone management service that first launched in 2006 and was acquired by Google for $50+ million in 2007, hasn’t been in the news much lately. Other than a few good natured jabs at their marketing gimmicks and coverage of outages, that is. Get ready for that to change as the service prepares for a public launch under a new product name: Google Voice.
The 21 month delay between… → Read More
GrandCentral, a phone management service that first launched in 2006 and was acquired by Google for $50+ million in 2007, hasn’t been in the news much lately. Other than a few good natured jabs at their marketing gimmicks and coverage of outages, that is. Get ready for that to change as the service prepares for a public launch under a new product name: Google Voice.
The 21 month delay between… → Read More
We don’t see it in our Gmail settings (yet), but Webmonkey reports that Gmail Labs has added a feature for sending text / SMS messages using the built-in Chat functionality.
Turning the option on in your Gmail account settings apparently enables you to send an SMS as soon as you start typing a phone number into Chat’s search box. We haven’t been able to try this out ourselves yet, but Google… → Read More
This is a strange story. Rumors circulated today that Silicon Valley based startup Ribbit was acquired by British Telecom, and VentureBeat ran with the story. The company later denied the rumors, but wouldn’t comment on whether or not merger discussions were occurring or not. The strange part is this – while Ribbit executives are denying the acquisition to the press, they’ve… → Read More
Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it. When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems – which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, and how many messages could be stored and… → Read More
GrandCentral, Google’s $50 million phone company, has been down all morning (see overview of service here). And that means every single user who has started using their GrandCentral phone number isn’t able to receive any calls. Users are complaining on Twitter, and I’ve confirmed this as well by simply calling friends who use the service. Calls will not go through. We’ve… → Read More
Most companies target early adopters with their new products, hoping those users will tell all of their friends all about it. But not GrandCentral, the company Google acquired for $50 million in July 2007. They’ve gone after the homeless demographic. Twice. Two years ago they offered to give homeless people free access to their (already free) service. It worked so well (4,000 signups) that… → Read More
When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget. In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites… → Read More
Nearly every VOIP related startup has their own click-to-call widget, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, and even GrandCentral. These widgets let you easily and sometimes anonymously set up a call with friends over the web. They’re very useful and come packed with features like voicemail and texting. However, each of these services connects phones to phones, which still eats away at your mobile minutes… → Read More
So much for GrandCentral’s “one number for life” promise. The company is turning off customer phone numbers and giving them new ones following their acquisition by Google last month. Troy Schneider received such a notice, advising him that in 8 days his GrandCentral number would be canceled and that he would be required to immediately start using a new number allocated to him. → Read More
My family is a GrandCentral family. We’re all like “Hey, honey, GrandCentral me!” and my wife is all like “I just GrandCentralled your mother. And your son just GrandCentralled in his diaper.” That’s how we roll. We love the service, which is part secretary, part answering machine, and part forwarding service. Check it out. When I signed up, they were giving out… → Read More
Google has confirmed the Grand Central Acquisition we suspected would be announced today or tomorrow. No official word on a price, but we believe it’s in the $50 million range. Google will be moving the service over to Google’s network. A limited number of invitations for GrandCentral beta accounts will still be available. If you have a U.S. telephone number, you can sign up for an… → Read More
A follow up to our post a week ago: A source close to the deal has confirmed to us that Google has closed the acquisition of GrandCentral and will be announcing it this week, probably today or tomorrow. Acquisitions are generally announced after the close of market, so look for this after 1 pm PST on the Google blog or in a press release (or both). If not today, possibly tomorrow. We have been… → Read More
Google is the Galactus of the Interwebs. When the giant gets hungry it simply goes out and finds a meal in which case GrandCentral is breakfast for today. In case you’re joining us and have no idea what GrandCentral is then stop on over here for the lowdown. The exact specifics about the deal are still under wraps, but Michael at TechCrunch feels it’s a great move on Google’s part. What… → Read More
Google is in acquisition discussions with telephone management startup GrandCentral, we’ve learned, and we have a high degree of confidence that the deal has actually been closed. We are trying to nail down the acquisition price. Just last week I flagged this company as the most exciting startup we’re currently tracking. The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all… → Read More
TechCrunch has had running coverage of telephone management startup GrandCentral since their debut in September of last year. MobileCrunch covered the release of their mobile client recently. Today they’ve come out with a useful guide to the service. Here’s our summary: GrandCentral is telephone management service that connects all your phones and adds some new features. To add… → Read More
Michael has just posted an extremely detailed guide to Grand Central, one of our favorite web/phone services. The guide includes all the secret button presses that we forgot to read about in the online manual and breaks down the service into easy to understand chunks. The center of the Grand Central universe is your Grand Central phone number. This is (theortically) the last phone number you will… → Read More
We’ve followed new telephone management startup GrandCentral since its debut in September 2006. The company has deservedly received a lot of blogger and mainstream press: Tim O’Reilly said “The Web 2.0 Address Book May Have Arrived” when talking about it, and the New York Times did a long overview article in March. The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone… → Read More
I’m not supposed to tell you about this because it’s still pretty hush, hush, but I love you guys so I’ll let this one slip. The mobile version of GrandCentral has been quietly released. Take it for a spin from your mobile phone, but don’t expect it to work from your computer. It hasn’t officially been announced, yet. So, what’s so special about the mobile… → Read More
Telephone management startup GrandCentral launched a mobile version of the service yesterday, although they have not announced the product yet. The mobile site is available at grandcentral.com/mobile. It will not load properly from a desktop browser, but it works just fine from all the mobile devices I tested. I assume they are blocking normal browsers to keep it quiet until the official launch. → Read More
TechCrunch just announced the release of GrandCentral Mobile. GrandCentral helps you manage all of your phones from one number by letting you forward calls, create personalized caller greetings, screen calls live, record your calls, and manage your voice mail from a single account. GrandCentral mobile, now lets you do that on the go. The new version is not a downloaded application, but works… → Read More
New telephone management startup GrandCentral is off to a solid start. They showed a preview of the service at the DEMO conference last year, and we gave GrandCentral a solid review, as did Rafe Needleman and others. The idea is simple, and compelling for many people with lots of phone numbers. GrandCentral will issue you a new local phone number for free. You then connect your existing phone… → Read More
I know I should be saving my Wows for Windows Vista, but I’m spending them all on GrandCentral. David Pogue talked about the service last week and I set up an account, just for kicks, to see how it worked. I didn’t really play with it until today and I’m really blown away. The service is fairly simple. You give it all of your phone numbers and it funnels calls through a… → Read More
GrandCentral aims to solve the problem of having too many phone numbers. You’ve got your home phone number, the cell, the office, the other cell, etc. Surely this is madness, right? GrandCentral, which is in the final stages of beta testing, replaces all those phone numbers with a single, unified one. (The New York Times’ David Pogue calls it a “uninumber.” Genius.) So… → Read More
Web based phone management service GrandCentral is launching here at DEMO and it’s one of the most interesting uses of VOIP I’ve seen yet. When you sign up for a GrandCentral VOIP number you can do all kinds of useful things with incoming calls and voice mail through the service’s web interface. Here’s a list of some of the features: Incoming phone calls ring on different… → Read More
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