Google Voice is a great service, one of the best things Google has released in a long time. Unfortunately, most casual web users have no idea what it is. Or more specifically, what its purpose is. And in fact, there’s even still some confusion amongst heavy web users about whether Voice is VoIP, for example (it’s not — yet). So Google has today launched a series of videos to explain the service.
The first (embedded below) is a simple overview, “What is Google Voice.” The 11 others go into more detail about actual features such as the mobile app (as in, the one that actually works on the iPhone), how to block callers, sharing voicemails, personalized greetings, and connecting all your numbers to your one Google Voice numbers, among other things. You can find them all on this new YouTube page that Google has created (just in case you thought Microsoft were the only ones using YouTube for product promotion).
There is also a video describing voicemail transcription. My favorite part of this video is how Google skirts around how the vast majority of the voice transcriptions are in absolute gibberish. “Transcriptions aren’t perfect, but we hope they’re good enough to save you from listening to the message.” I have yet to experience that. Instead, here are some of my favorites that I’ve gotten just in the past couple of weeks:
With that fun. It’s but but. Thank you. Thanks Hello yeah, I don’t think you got the right number.
It’s important to you 8 technical alright. Call me. Troubleshooting just to okay.
Hi Angie, This is mcKayla I we met at the crash, 50 calling friends and I’d like for a check start.
Hands down, the best way to experience Google Voice is to let it take over the phone controls on your mobile device. Unfortunately, that only works on Android devices right now — and likely never will for the iPhone. Those of us with iPhones will have to settle for the web app version (which is still pretty nice).
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZU7BOeQ58&hl=en_US&fs=1&w=630]
