GrandCentral is a online/offline phone service enabled by VoIP that promises to be your one, universal, end-all, no-need-for-another phone number provider.
Primarily, they are a call-locating service. You provide them with your long list of phone numbers (home, work, cell, vacation cabin, etc.), and when someone calls, it simultaneously rings each number you’ve provided — with intelligence (i.e., it won’t ring your home number during work hours, if that’s what you want it to do).
Throw in some online, unified voice-messaging and you’ve got the makings of a killer app. When you call your new number from one of your registered phones it recognizes that fact and lets you in to your voicemail box, easy as that.
That in and of itself is cool. Add to it spam filtering (which automatically allows callers in your address book to ring through, and has unrecognized callers record their name as a voice tag which) that announces to you who is calling and gives you the option to accept, send to voicemail, send to voicemail and listen-in, or accept and record and you’re beginning to see the true power of the service.
Next, add a ‘blog widget to play back recorded voice messages that you’ve received, and another that lets people ring you just by filling in their information (see below), and you’re starting to see what a little bit of VoIP plus a bit of ingenuity can do.
What’s missing?
I’d like the service to detect when voicemail has picked up on one of the lines being monitored so that system doesn’t record a useless message (they say that’s in the works).
I’d like the option to be emailed with an .mp3 of the voice message so I can get the voice message on my data-enabled Pocket PC phone, so I don’t have to find a computer or “call myself” to listen to the voice message.
I’d like the option to have a “pay-per-call” or “pay-per-minute” number that I can give out to telemarketers, survey conductors, political candidates, etc. I’ll listen to what they have to say, so long as they’re paying $2.50/minute to do so.
This just in!
According to this report, Google may have acquired GrandCentral…. Hmmm… interesting.
