Skip to main content

Google Voice in Gmail

After the acquisition of Gizmo5 by Google, everybody knew what was about to happen. Google will expand to the realms of VOIP which is currently dominated by Skype. Its not about a question of if, it was a question of when. Finally, after the long wait, Google launches Call from Gmail.

From the comfort of your own Gmail account, you could call the US and Canada or free.

Hello there little Call Phone button!
By default, if you're not a Google Voice subscriber, your number will display as a generic number. But Google will offer you to upgrade your account to a Google Voice account for free and you get to pick your own number. But theres a catch, you need to have a US number.

I tried ringing my Google Voice number from my other account.
You will be offered a Google Voice number if you want to be reached easily.
I circumvented this problem by using our Magic Jack number so I could reserve a number with POGZ in it. Also, there is that error that says Google Voice is not available in your country. I remember I activated my account when I was in America a year ago but you could always use those free US proxies just to enable your account and to call dibs on the number you want.

You could select the option Forward to Google chat all calls from your Google Voice number.
Now since Google Voice has been integrated to Gmail, your Gmail account will ring if someone tries to call your Google Voice number. Pretty neat huh? :)

This is what it looks like when you're being called on your Gmail account.
Feel free to try it out for yourself! Log in to your Gmail account and click on the Call Phone button on your Google Chat box. As per Engadget's review of the call quality, Calling FROM Gmail surpasses the quality held by Skype but apparently, as they reported, Google still has work to do in improving its noise cancellation technology. If you want to read more about Engadget's article, click here.

The call rates for other areas of the world could be found here. And as Google said, its "Insanely Low" rates is in fact, really low compared to SIP services, Skype and Yahoo Messenger.

Apparently, after that net neutrality ruckus with Verizon, I think they're still wearing the smug launching this service. It kinda feels like they kicked the teleco companies in the nuts.

Good job Google! You've made the world a smaller place once more!



100826 9:38pm Edit:

Apparently, Lifehacker has compiled a nice guide on how to maximize your new and shiny Gmail communication tool. Click here for details: http://lifehacker.com/5622470/eight-clever-ways-to-take-advantage-of-free-calling-in-gmail

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Self Signed SSL Certificates

Ever wondered how to enable SSL or HTTPS on your site? If you dont want to pay for commercial SSL certificates, you could create self signed certificates for your site by following the instructions here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-create-a-ssl-certificate-on-apache-for-ubuntu-12-04 The instructions in the site above will make your default site HTTPS enabled. If you prefer having a commercial SSL, save your certificate files and key files in your server and edit the location on the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default to point to the directory where you stored those files.

Moving to a New Linux Web Based Torrent Client

For years, I have been using TorrentFlux (url here) as my primary torrent client situated in my Ubuntu download server. But as time went on, the developers completely abandoned the development of TorrentFlux which led to several forks which I think is still insufficient for my needs. Main GUI of TorrentFlux Ive checked several options which runs on a GUI-less environment. Since my Ubuntu server is just running on command line to save precious memory, I needed something bare, simple and is packed with features. Installing uTorrent Server is pretty straight forward. Download. Uncompress. Run. This is better than the approach of TorrentFlux which you need to setup LAMP server and create a database. More often than not, it happens to me that some of the data in the DB gets corrupted. I normally just reinstall the whole thing again. Main GUI of uTorrent Server To further elaborate on the setup process, I've gotten an excerpt from this thread which, quite simply discusses ho

Modernizing Qwtlys Database Part 1

Its been years since I have last updated Qwtly and I was given the opportunity to play around and modernize the database for my application. I wanted to try the cloud offering of MongoDB called Atlas being that its free for a small database.  With this in mind and considering that Qwtly doesn't get traffic after I have disabled the add, edit and delete quote function along with the login, I don't see the application getting to that limit of 5GB anyway. Well, that is considering if I can even get this to work.  The first order of business was to see if we can import the MySQL export painlessly to MongoDB Atlas. I have searched for MongoDB tools, external tools, scripts, only to find old abandoned projects which would not be ideal given my situation. I have considered writing a PHP script to do it but that too would cost time. I was looking for something that consists of using existing tools or features I am familiar with along with some manual eyballing and checking. Luckily, I