Google recently bought out a company whose services I find myself quite impressed with. Grand Central is a company that will give you a “phone number for life.” But that’s not the half of it. Part of the service includes the ability to ring multiple phones at the same time. You can put up to five number into the system and when you get a call it will ring all of them and transfer the call to the first number that answers it. You can even have an address book where you can define groups of people (by default there’s 4 groups: friends, family, work, other). You can set preferences about which phones ring for which groups. So I can set it that friends and family ring my home phone, but work and others (anybody not in your address book is in the others category) don’t. It has a call recording feature (a message is announced to both parties); voice mails are retrievable by phone or online; you can set up a temporary number to forward calls to in addition to the configured 5 via phone or online; you can set ringback and voice mail messages specific to each group; and I’m sure there’s a few that I’m not listing. All and all it looks to be a really nice service. It’s currently in beta (though most of Google is in beta 🙂 ) and invite only, but free. They’ve stated that there will always be a free version, but someday they will start charging for premium features. As this develops, I can see it being a really good fit with Google Apps (that’s probably why they bought it).
6 Replies to “Grand Central”
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“whose”
Google always respects great ideas and this time also google has taken over a company like Grand Central with great ideas.
There is one more company like Grand Central, Pfingo. I downloaded its software they also provide the same kind of features.
Google will definitely include the functions of this into the GPhone.
Is it really necessary for 1 number to ring everything? I mean, most people use cells now …not even home phones.
Thats actually a really nice service. I’ve been going to college and having a local number there and then a local number here. Having just 1 number to contact me, even if I’m out and about with my cell would be away.
Thats one thing I always respect about Google (even though they’re huge now). They always look ahead and respect innovative ideas. I’m always impressed by the way Google runs their business. Thats why businesses like them and Apple do great while other companies get hammered.
I can’t believe that I haven’t heard of this, but I’m glad that I stumbled onto your site, it is pretty cool and I’m going to check into this, thanks for providing the links that you took the time to do. Plus I’m going to place this information onto my blog in hopes of spreading the word of something that I think would be a very useful tool for so many people. So while this is being offered for Free, now is the time to check it out, and I plan on doing just that.
Your friend,
Cheryl Beckham
This application sounds really great. If a person from works tires to reach me through my personal number will they get a busy tone?