Good News and Bad News.  The Good News is that the Google Voice address book has gotten smarter (i.e. more useful).  The Bad News is that our suggestions from our October 18^th article will now break things.

In that article, GVS showed you how to label phone numbers and how to remind yourself of phone numbers that spelled things out.

What’s changed?  Google Voice now dials the letters that are stored as part of phone number entries.  Overall, this is a big improvement.  It answers one of the issues raised in our October 18^th article – you can now directly store and use phone numbers as alpha-numeric strings.  You still have your choice of punctuation options (Parentheses, Dashes, Spaces, Brackets, etc.).  Here are three examples of the new way to do things:

Remember those classic sitcoms?

This isn’t a secret - Leo has given out his Google Voice number during TWiT before.

The Notes are mostly redundant in this case, but still might be handy if you ever have to talk someone through a phone number over the phone.

Considering how many friends that I’ve talked into getting phone numbers that spell something out, I actually look forward to cleaning up my address book.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t help with the other issue – adding descriptive labels to each phone number.  This is especially surprising since Google Voice lets you label your own phone numbers, so instead of two “Work” phone numbers you can label one as “Day Job” and the other one as “Night Job”, etc.  Remember our Busy Kid example:

This doesn’t work anymore!

Here are two less elegant ways to get the same functionality today:

(Yes, GVS realizes that all of its readers would have figured out this one themselves – We’re just putting this here for the sake of completeness.)

It’s still surprising to me that Google Voice gives you the option of labeling other people’s phone numbers as “Home Fax” and “Work Fax”, but doesn’t offer an option for “Google Voice”.  (The best that you can do is label their Google Voice number as “Other”.)  Why is this important?  Because many Google Voice subscribers don’t always use Google Voice for every outgoing call that they make, you still want to have all of their phone numbers in your address book so that Google Voice can match up their incoming calls correctly.  (You also don’t ever want to willingly become dependent on any one system:  Save all of their phone numbers in Google Voice and periodically export all of your Google Voice address book to a file that you store somewhere “in the cloud”, as well as on your own computer or USB backup drive.  Something could go wrong with either your Google Voice account or the Google Voice account of the person that you are calling.  In fact, if you don’t backup your data, something probably will go wrong. L )

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

Skype is a great service.  While it’s future path has seemed a bit uncertain lately, due to various ownership and IP issues, I bet that it will survive and hopefully even give Google Voice a bit of serious self-supporting competition.  If you’ve ever watched listened to any of Leo LaPorte’s fantastic podcasts at www.TWiT.tv or watched the live video feed at live.TWiT.tv (coming soon to a television near you), you know how great the audio and video quality of Skype calls can be.  (Feel free to eMail Leo@TWiT.tv and encourage him to have someone from www.GoogleVoiceSecrets.com on This Week in Google and/or This Week in Tech.J)

Skype is VOIP, so the quality is subject to network issues and especially the quality of the connection at both ends.  On the other hand, most of my Skype-to-Skype calls sound noticeably better than regular, hard-wired, landline calls.

So why am I writing about Skype here?

(1) I added a comment to an earlier article of mine, pointing out the benefit of being able to use Google Voice with Gizmo5 in order to be able to make free phone calls from Wi-Fi enabled airplanes:
http://www.googlevoicesecrets.com/make-and-receive-google-voice-calls-directly

(2) Bruce Wagner pointed out that Oprah made a Skype call from a Virgin America flight earlier this year:
http://www.virginamerica.com/va/press/2009/May/Virgin_America_First_Airline_to_Offer_Fleetwide_WiFi.html

(3) I replied with a comparison of Oprah’s impressive, flashy video call and what most of us really would like as our next step up in connectivity.

That reply started to include a detailed breakdown of the pluses, minuses and costs of using Skype that got to be longer than my original reply itself and seemed like it might be of general interest to more readers that just the ones that drill down into the comments section of old articles, so I am posting it as a stand-alone article here.

To call real phones with Skype, you either need a (cancelable) subscription to Skype ($3 per month gets you voicemail and unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada) or you will need to buy Skype Credit for outgoing calls to almost all countries worldwide.  The drawback with Skype Credit is that the smallest amount that you can buy is $10.  The unlimited outgoing calling portion of the subscription used to be known as SkypeOut and used to cost around $3 per month (without voicemail).  In order to receive calls from real phones, you will need to get an “online number”.  I think that that is a terrible name for the service – if your colleagues are online, they can already call you for free.  The purpose of an “online number” is to allow people that are offline to be able to call you, using regular phones.  An “online number” currently costs $60 per year and does NOT include voicemail!  (Two years ago, it was known as SkypeIn, cost $30 per year and did include voicemail!)

Why would you need voicemail on an outgoing calling system, but not on an incoming phone line?  It is available separately for your incoming line, for an extra charge ($20 per year).

For my business, all I needed was a nice sounding incoming business number with voicemail.  If I didn’t answer the call when it came in, I could call my customers back on my regular landlines.

Fortunately, there is a “Trick”.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure who’s “Tricking” who here.  J  Most places on Skype’s site which refer to buying an “online number” or voicemail have a link telling you that you can “Save with a subscription”.  What does that mean?

For $36 per year ($3 per month), you can unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada and voicemail for an entire year.  You can also buy and “online number” for incoming calls for 50% off, which would work out to $30 per year.  All totaled, you’d have everything that you need to make and receive phone calls on your computer, including voicemail, for $66 per year.

This is comparable to what full-service customers of Skype have been paying for the past four years for unlimited incoming calls, with voicemail and unlimited outgoing calls to the U.S. and Canada.

My current complaint is that all I really want from them today is unlimited incoming calls and voicemail.  That used to cost me $30 per year.  Today, it would cost $80 per year, unless I knew the “trick” of getting a basic subscription, adding unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada and bringing my actual cost down to $66 per year.

Of course, the subscription costs $3 per month, billed monthly.  There are also a number of “answering machine” add-on programs for Skype that will give you VoiceMail-like functionality, if your computer is turned all of the time (and all goes well).  Some are freeware and/or have freeware junior versions.  The one that I have the most experience with is PrettyMay, but I haven’t tried their paid version or upgraded their free version in over a year.  Hypothetically, you could sign up for a Skype subscription for $3, get an “online number” for $30 for a full year, cancel your Skype subscription (your Skype account and “online number” will continue to work just fine) and try out a third-party program as an alternative to Skype’s voicemail.  Your Net Cost?  As little as $33 per year.  Maybe that’s the real “Trick”, but it’s also a compromise.

$66 per year was an unbelievable deal before MagicJack came along offering phone service for $40 for the first year and $20 for each year after that (assuming that their prices stay steady and that they stay in business).  Bruce Wagner is the expert on all things MagicJack and I’m hoping that he’ll write up an overview of MagicJack for us sometime soon.  (Bruce was also the first person to tell me about Skype, GrandCentral and a number of other telephony services.  He has his experts that he talks to, but he is my expert.  You can read Bruce’s insights into every subject under the sun (and then some) at http://brucewagner.posterous.com/.)

www.GoogleVoiceSecrets.com needs to do another article discussing the specialized hardware that you may want to buy to use with Skype or Gizmo5.  The most important single item that you can get is a basic wired headset with a boom microphone.  I find that the $7 ones from MicroCenter work just fine.  The next step up is an adapter to let you plug in a real telephone to your computer.  I have had a $60 one from D-Link for the past two years.  It’s great when it works, but I find that it’s software is very flakey.  Also, it’s Skype-only.  (I’m sure that this is only a software issue.)  There are also stand-alone Skype phones that work with Wi-Fi connections.  Now that Gizmo5 is a part of Google, I’m sure that most hardware manufacturers will be making sure that their devices are compatible with both Skype and Gizmo5.  I’ve even seen drivers for sale that will let you use your MagicJack hardware with Skype and Gizmo5.

Of course, all of that brings us back to MagicJack and three of its best points (over and above the price):

(1) The MagicJack hardware does allow you to plug in a “real phone” right out of the box.

(2) MagicJack is possibly the simplest system for non-techies to set up themselves.

(3) The sound quality on MagicJack is also very good (subject to the normal amount of VOIP related dropouts).  For households with a computer that’s turned on 24/7, MagicJack means that there’s probably no reason to ever go with Vonage or Comcast Digital Voice.  (I would love it if an organization like Consumer Reports really compared MagicJack, Vonage, Comcast Digital Voice, Skype, Gizmo5 and other major VOIP options under controlled conditions and publish the results for everyone to see.)

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

After many months of heavy speculation, Google finally acquires Gizmo5 for a reported $30 million.  The two word description of Gizmo5 is “Another Skype”.  Of course, both services have their own plusses and minuses, but a lot like IM systems, the biggest one is probably who can you call for free on each network and who is on the other one.  (A few years ago, eBay paid $1.4 billion for Skype, without the IP for a key underlying technology.  That’s almost 50 times as much as Google paid for Gizmo5.)

This means that, as explained in our article from just a few days ago http://www.googlevoicesecrets.com/make-and-receive-google-voice-calls-directly, you can now use Google Voice as your telephony control system and Google’s Gizmo5 as one of your real telephones in real phone conversations!

The timing of that article was purely coincidental.  This was one of the hundred or so articles that we have had sitting on our to-be-written list since June.  If you are a decent writer with some free time, but don’t know what to write about, please contact us for some article ideas that we’d love to see on www.GoogleVoiceSecrets.com.  The techie stuff has already been done.  The hard part – putting it into plain English – is what’s holding us back.

This acquisition seemed like a logical thing ever since Google acquired GrandCentral back in 2007, partially because it would help fill in a gap in their services and partially because GrandCentral had already been working quite well with Gizmo5 since the beginning.  But would it really happen?

Up until very recently, Skype was reportedly in talks to acquire Gizmo5 themselves.  They could have used the Gizmo5 backbone as a replacement for the IP still owned by Skype’s founders.  Now that eBay has sold off most of Skype to a group that includes Skype’s founders, they really had no direct use Gizmo5, except possibly taking them off the market in order to make it that much harder for another company to come along and become a competitor.  In terms of perceived market-share, if Skype was Microsoft, Gizmo5 was Apple and Yahoo Voice (and others) were Linux.  (This isn’t a statement on the actual market share of any of these systems or a comment on the perceived usability of any of these systems.)

Well, Skype didn’t need them and I think that it’s a good thing that they didn’t waste money trying to crush a competitor.

More importantly, it’s great that Google got off the fence and acquired this missing link.  (One wonders if they would have held out for a few more months if they could have purchased all of Yahoo, including Yahoo Voice, for less than $30 million, but better a good deal now than gambling on a better deal later.  J  )

Finally, here’s a bit of Good News and Bad News:

The Good News – While we haven’t had enough time to play around with Gizmo5 enough to confirm this, it appears that Gizmo5 makes it easy to switch between accounts.  It might even allow you to be logged into more than one account at the same time, on the same computer.  If that’s true, that would be a huge advantage over Skype.  (I still have two paid accounts on Skype (with nice sounding phone numbers for separate businesses).  Since I am actually paying for them, it is exceptionally annoying to have to log out of one account, just to check on the other one.)  Of course, even if this is true today, it seems to be Google’s policy to try to lock down each person to a single account for everything.

The Bad News – Since the official announcement, Gizmo5 is “suspending new signups” until it is re-launched under the Google brand name.  This sounds a lot like what happened to GrandCentral in July of 2007 and it was almost two years before new people could sign up for Google Voice after that.  (I doubt that it will take that long this time – the feature set seems complete, but Google will no doubt want to tweak it a bit and link it to your Google Account(s?).  Likewise, Gizmo5 was able to handle it’s old growth rate, but it will probably have to do some preparation in order to scale up as fast as it will need to as Google latest offering.)

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

References:

The essential facts about Gizmo5 for readers of www.GoogleVoiceSecrets.com from November 10^th, 2009:
http://www.googlevoicesecrets.com/make-and-receive-google-voice-calls-directly

Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch’s scoop of the story on November 9^th, 2009:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/exclusive-google-has-acquired-gizmo5/

CNET’s coverage of the official announcement on November 12^th, 2009:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10397006-265.html

The official announcement by Wesley Chan and Craig Walker, cofounders of GrandCentral and now Group Product Managers for Google Voice:
http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-welcomes-gizmo5.html

The official Gizmo5 site:
www.Gizmo5.com now takes you to www.google.com/gizmo5/

More about Yahoo Voice:
http://voice.yahoo.jajah.com/home/index.castle

As long as I mentioned having still having two Skype numbers for two of my businesses above, I probably should include a shameless plug for them here.  For expert software development, specializing in Microsoft technologies, database design and user interface issues, check out:
www.Compuvision.Info

For expert help in the process of implementing a Lean Manufacturing system, including a really good PFEP database which is at the heart of any Lean Manufacturing system, check out:
www.PFEP.Info

I’m a big believer in old-fashioned phone technology.  Whenever possible, I want my calls to be to and from landlines using wired phones.  Likewise, I don’t want to carry on a serious conversation on a speakerphone.  One of the things that I like best about Google Voice is that my phone calls ultimately end up on my real phones.

Most of the time, this is great, but sometimes we are already using our computer and we’d just like to be able to use it as a phone as well.  (Maybe you are using a laptop computer and have a Wi-Fi connection to the internet, but no cellular phone reception.)  “That’s what Skype is for.”  True, but tying your Skype account to your Google Voice account requires you to buy a SkypeIn account.  (i.e. a real phone number for between $24 and $60 per year.)  There is a better answer:

Gizmo

Gizmo is a lot like Skype.  (I’ll leave it for someone else with the time and interested to do a good compare and contrast review of both services.)  Gizmo, like Skype, requires you to install a small program that connects to the internet and uses your computer’s microphone and speakers in order to become a telephone.  The critical difference is that Gizmo gives you a SIP number.  While a SIP number is not a regular phone number that can be directly dialed, it is a telephone industry standard for connecting telephony devices.  The way that that helps us here is that Google Voice will allow you to use your Gizmo number as one the phones on your account.  (Unfortunately, not the only phone on your account, but that probably has a lot to do with their current FCC controversies.)

There are other good reasons why you may want to add Gizmo to your Google Voice Account.  Maybe you don’t have a cellular phone, but take your NetBook everywhere that you go.  Maybe you don’t like using up your cellular phone minutes when you don’t have to.  You want to keep using your Google Voice account, even when traveling outside the U.S.  You might like some of Gizmo’s other features.  (Please feel encouraged to add your reasons to the comments at the end of this article.)

How to add Gizmo to your Google Voice account:

First, go to the official Gizmo site www.Gizmo5.com, then download and install the Gizmo client for your computer.  (They have versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, Nokia Tablets and other mobile devices.)  The installation process will take you through setting up a free account and assigning you a free SIP number.)

Second, tell Google Voice that you are adding another phone to your account.  Choose “Gizmo” as the phone type and enter your SIP number.  (Gizmo: Adding a Gizmo number (from Google Voice Help))

You’re ready to go!

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

Here’s an extra credit question for the readers that I am wondering about – if you already have a SIP number that you are using with something else (like Asterisk, the open-source PBX), can you tell Google Voice that it is a “Gizmo” phone and have it work the way that you’d want it to?

It seems like only yesterday that I posted my now classic article “Before You Set Up Your New Google Voice Account…”.  (It was actually three days ago.)  Well, not only did it inspire the first comment on Google Voice Secrets (ever), but it contained a real important tip that I wanted to highlight here.

I want to thank Justin Goldberg for his tip on how to change the GMail account that your Google Voice phone number is associated with!

The simple answer is you use the “Request to allow Google Voice account transfer” form.

Justin – Thank You Again!

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

Google Voice gives you a variety of ways to classify the phone numbers in your address book.  Currently the choices are Home, Work, Mobile, Home Fax, Work Fax, Pager and Other.  Unfortunately, sometimes that’s not enough.  You could use the Notes field for notes (try to look surprised J ) but with a lot of phone numbers it’s less than ideal to have too much separation on the screen between a phone number’s Call button and it’s description.

Here’s an alternative.  Google Voice ignores alphabetic and special characters in phone numbers.  Here’s an example of how you might use this feature for a someone who technically has three Home phone numbers and two Work phone numbers:

This is also a handy way to remind yourself of phone numbers that spell out cute things:

Thank You to Bruce Wagner for first pointing this one out to me!

Here’s something that I don’t really understand:  I assume that Home Fax and Work Fax are just there for the sake of completeness.  I don’t claim to be a fax expert but is it possible on some fax machines to receive a call (from Google Voice) and then transmit a fax when the machine at the other end answers?

 Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

This is an important thing to consider – Google Voice isn’t a charitable project.  As consumers, it’s important for us to know what Google is getting out of all of this and, if we are okay with those reasons, do our best to support them.

I’m extremely excited to announce that Bruce Wagner has agreed to Google Voice Secrets as an occasional contributor.  Many people know Bruce as a talk show host who covers more topics (in depth) than Oprah.  He’s currently in the process of relaunching as a web-based show, ala Tom Green and Revision3, at www.bredmedia.com.

More importantly, for the past twenty years Bruce has been an internationally known expert on leading-edge telephony technology.  I am always impressed at the number of times that I find something really new and important, only to realize that Bruce told me about it a year earlier.  Another reason that this is good news is that Bruce is actually a good writer, unlike myself.  (Maybe someday, I’ll find a good writer to rewrite my articles…)  You can contact Bruce at “Bruce (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com”.

I don’t think that we’ll ever have another contributor as knowledgeable about telephony as Bruce, but please – prove me wrong.  Send me a sample article or two to post to the site and let me add you as a contributor that can post articles without going through me.  (Also feel free to contact me if you’d just like to interview me and post well-written articles based on those interviews on this site.)

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

Here are a few things to keep in mind before you set up your Google Voice Account:

1.    Know which of your GMail accounts you want to associate it with.  Google really wants you to just have one Google Voice account.  If you start really using and liking Google Voice, then you are probably going to want to stay logged into it all day.  This means that if you walk away from your machine (and leave it unlocked), someone else can just sit down there and browse your Google Voice, GMail, Google Docs, etc.

2.    Be prepared to choose a phone number.  Ideally, if you have a friend with Google Voice, ask them to initiate changing their own phone number in front of you so that you can browse the choices.  After your account is set up, you can change your phone number once for $10.  (You may be able to do this every 90 days – it hasn’t been that long yet for me to test this.)  I am planning on posting my first of many “How to Choose a Good Phone Number” article sometime soon.

3.    Remember that there is no automated way to change associations between Google Voice accounts / phone numbers and GMail accounts.  Likewise, you can only be logged into one Google account per browser, per machine.  (i.e. per browser, not per window, thus one for IE, one for Chrome, etc.)  If you find a phone number that you want for a friend, get that friend to sign up for it.  (quickly – see my previous posting about these numbers going fast.)  If you see a number that love, but don’t know how you are going to use right now, like (999) 4-COFFEE (i.e. (999) 426-3333), then maybe you are better off creating a new GMail account called something like Call.4.Coffee@GMail.com and then creating your Google Voice Account using that GMail account.  It can always forward messages to your regular account, but if you decide to give it away, it won’t be tied to your personal GMail account.  (I have heard rumors that these connections might be changeable by people inside of Google, but I get the feeling that it is only done for VIPs.)

4.    Be prepared to set up a connection with at least one real phone number right away.

5.    Remember that each Mobile phone number can only be associated with one Google Voice Number.  Likewise, each Home or Work phone number can only be associated with a maximum of two Google Voice Numbers.

Originally, the founders of GrandCentral either started or were heavily involved with something called Project CARE (Communications and Respect for Everybody).  Project CARE allowed people without phone service to have a free VoiceMail account of their very own, to help them be a more active part of society.  (It’s even harder to find a job if you don’t have a phone number.)  http://www.grandcentral.com/projectcare/  I don’t know what it takes to go through proper channels and set up a Google Voice account for someone using Project CARE, but if you are trying to do the same thing for someone that you know on your own, keep in mind that you can set up a Google Voice Account to share one of your own phone numbers, then uncheck that phone number (but leave it on the Google Voice Account) so that it never actually rings.  Of course, you are limited by the number of actual phone numbers that you have and your friend could re-enable ringing on your phone number for their calls.

As always, I hope that some of this was helpful.

Steven @ GoogleVoiceSecrets.com