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Google Voice


Happy Face
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Google Voice has quietly arrived in Gmail, sidling into your inbox to deliver a blow to Skype. You can now make phone calls to mobiles and landlines from Gmail on your computer.

 

 

Google Voice has been in the US for a while, and is designed to give you one phone number for life. It's now been expanded to Blighty, among other places, and you can now pay in pounds, Euros, Canadian dollars or US dollars.

 

To get chatting, install the voice and video plug-in and look out for the little green phone icon to show up at the top of your chat list. You'll need to add credit first, which only offers the option of topping up £10 at a time -- before VAT. You can set it up to send you an email warning you when you drop to £2.

 

Google Voice saves your call history, just like a phone. It also saves a record of really short calls, for which you can ask for your money back if you had to cut off the call because the quality wasn't good enough.

 

 

If you use business-minded Google Apps, like we do here at CNET Towers, you'll need to ask your domain administrator to enable Google Voice and Google Checkout in order to get calling. Calls to other Gmail users via a browser remain free.

 

 

Call rates are respectable: mobiles and France cost 7p per minute, but India costs 2p and a chinwag with our colonial friends costs just 1 per minute. There are no connection charges, unlike Skype, so you only pay for the time you spend chatting.

 

Skype was recently bought by Microsoft, and also integrated with Facebook for video calling within the social network. Apple kicked off the current crop of video calling with FaceTime. Video chat is also a key element of Google+.

 

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/google-vo...gmail-50004724/

 

To install - http://www.google.com/chat/voice/

 

No mention of "One Number" which I've been waiting for with baited breath....

 

 

Can't install the software at work to see if it's included. Anyone wanna give it a go and report back? :lol:

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It's 'bated breath' btw, HF. Unless you're a fish :lol:

Shortened from "abated" isn't it?

 

Says I can't do it as "The Google voice and video chat installer does not support installing with administrator privileges"

Edited by The Fish
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It's 'bated breath' btw, HF. Unless you're a fish :lol:

Shortened from "abated" isn't it?

Bated's a word in its own right I think. Same/similar meaning and derivation though.

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It's 'bated breath' btw, HF. Unless you're a fish :lol:

 

:lol:

 

erm...spell check must have done that.

Just kidding, I write stuff phonetically all the time on here.

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Looks pretty good, but so did Google Wave.

 

Has anyone used it before. How reliable is it?

 

I use Skype a lot, which is unreliable inbound (often redirect to voice mail), flawless outbound and massively lacking in features.

Edited by Phil
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Looks pretty good, but so did Google Wave.

 

Has anyone used it before. How reliable is it?

 

You should give it a whirl Phil. Step into the beyond...Toontastic's very own Space Monkey :lol:

 

The first ever monkey astronaut was Albert, a Rhesus Monkey, who on June 11, 1948 rode to over 63 km (39 miles) on a V2 rocket. Albert died of suffocation during the flight

 

:lol:

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