Welcome to another productivity Friday, where we at PureDriven step away from our usual focus on how to drive web traffic to your business, to discuss interesting online tools you can use to manage your time online more effectively.
Those sneaky programmers over at Google quietly added another tool to their free chest of goodies this week. The new tool called Google Call, allows you to now make calls from any Google (Gmail) account for free in the United States and Canada.
And if you add Google Voice, you can even use your computer as your home phone, complete with voice-mail that gets transcribed fairly well, and e-mailed to you, all for free.
In a nutshell, here’s how it works.
Google Voice is like your own switchboard operator. You sign up here, and get a number.
Then when someone calls you on that number, it rings as many individuals phones as you want: home, work, cell, and yes, your laptop or home computer, through Gmail. So as long as you have Internet access and a computer, you don’t need to worry about having a great cellular signal.
If you want to call someone. You just type the number in the on screen keypad, or click on the name in your Gmail account, if you have a number for them already entered.
I already have a headset, so talking through my computer isn’t cumbersome. But New York Times technology reviewer David Pogue said he’s tested the service with only his built in speakers and microphone, and it seems to work fine.
If you use the service Magic Jack, I would strongly encourage you to consider this option. I’ve used Magic Jack, as have my parents, and routinely ran into troubles with maintaining stable online conversations. I’ve only made a few calls on Google Call so far, but already it seems much more stable, and it’s free, which is still cheaper than Magic Jack.
Moving from Magic Jack to Google Call
If you want to make the switch, here’s how:
1. Start a Google account. Make some calls to see how you like the service.
2.If you decide it’s for you, get a Google Voice number (having to pass out this number to friends and family is the only real negative of the switch).
3. You can then enter your Google Voice number into your Google account, so when people call you, a message will appear on your screen, so long as you keep a Gmail browser tab remains open. Here’s where you can read more on setting up Google Voice to receive calls.
Any questions?
Tags: Google Call, Productivity
