So I just got my Google Voice account invitation after a long wait. Google purchased Grand Central back in 2008 and has been busy adding their own touches to the VOIP call forwarding system. I have to say I am pretty impressed so far with quality of calls and the options available in the interface.

I gave my dad a call through Google Voice calling his cell phone and my home voip line. As it turned out he was traveling in MN and the call was actually as clear or clearer than most of the calls I make to land lines from my home VOIP phone. I was a bit disappointed at first as I thought my call was getting crossed over with another call, but after a pause and a quick listen I realized it was the GPS in his rental car telling him to turn left!

As for the application itself, when you first log in in, you get to choose from an assortment of phone numbers; filtering by area code, zip code, and word/number combinations. Although there were numerous numbers in my area code and zip code, I found it was somewhat limited, many zip codes still have not been populated and when you filter, you limit your options greatly. There was only one number in my zip code with the 3 digit combination I wanted. Oh well, so much for being picky…

The system itself is very easy to use and mimics the Gmail look and feel which many are quite use to by now. I found it both intuitive and down right cool that all my contacts from my Gmail account had already been populated with their numbers. A simple auto populated pull down to find the contact you wish to call and voila… call in progress.

The system works by calling both parties both the “caller” and the “call-e”. By calling both parties it allows Google Voice to bypass any long distance phone charges on the behalf of the caller. Pretty smart stuff! There is voicemail and advanced call filtering features, caller id, call screening, transcripts of your voice mails… all sorts of goodies. You can also make inexpensive international calls and they even have a widget for your peeps to call through your website. My only complaint initially, is that I have not been able to get the website widget to work as of yet…

Check it out and get your own account at Google Voice.

Right now new accounts are limited, but you can request an account here and they will email you once it is available.