Back in November, when Papi and I upgraded our iPhones, we took the extra step of combining accounts into a shared minutes plan. We were both throwing an insane amount of money into our cell phone plans and acquiring a ridiculous amount of rollover minutes we’d obviously never use (since the people we talk to the most are on AT&T), so we bit the bullet. Really, I bit the bullet, since I was the one who, very reluctantly, had to give up my (213) number.
This is gonna sound so stupid, but I had a serious emotional attachment to the area code. It was my last remaining connection to Los Angeles, and apparently, (213)’s are now hard to come by if you sign up for new service. It also took me forever to finally switch to a California area code. I lived in OC for three years and stuck with an (860) number throughout all my provider switches, and didn’t migrate phone numbers until I finally moved to the city. It was hard to give up.
Shortly after the switch, I thought about Grand Central. I’d originally read about the service on Jon‘s old blog and thankfully, I’d opened up an account before they stopped giving out numbers. So yes, I still have a (213)!
Basically, GrandCentral gave you a single phone number to manage all your calls. You could set one or multiple phones that this number would forward to, meaning you only needed to give out a single number for the rest of your life, no matter how often you moved, switched providers, or changed your place of employment.
GrandCentral stopped accepting new accounts a little while ago when they were acquired by Google. I believe they did have a waiting list and offered to hold numbers in certain area codes while Google worked its magic on the service, but as of right now it remains in closed beta. They’re now allowing GrandCentral account holders to upgrade to Google Voice, and LifeHacker has a pretty good post on what it looks like.
I upgraded my account this morning and it’s pretty dope. It’s hard for me to compare to the old GrandCentral since I hardly used it back then and can’t recall the kinds of services it offered (besides call forwarding), but the interface seems to be cleaner and more intuitive than what I remember. It transcribes your voicemail messages and emails them to you, and I believe this might be new, but you can send and receive texts to and from your Google Voice number. The texts will be routed to the cell phone connected to your account, as well as right into your mailbox. Not bad at all.
The only thing I haven’t yet figured out is how to make calls from your phone and have your GV number show up on the recipient’s caller ID. The iPhone app Grand Dialer used to be able to do this, but it apparently doesn’t work now that the service has migrated. Hopefully a new app will be coming soon.
I’m still learning the ins and outs, but there are already a few good reviews of the service already. The new UI and features make me more into putting my Google Voice number on my next business card. Hopefully they’ll open up public beta soon for those of you who don’t have an account yet!
{ 0 comments }
