The Brian Hayes

Google Voice for Voicemail Management

I have had a google voice account for sometime now.  I was excited about the service when I first got the invite but quickly lost interest when I found there wasn’t a good way to utilize the service without changing my number.  I know plenty of people did that, but my cell number is my cell number.  It’s the only cell number I have ever had and I didn’t see why I should change it now.  With that Google’s seemingly great (and again free) service went unused.  Until yesterday.

I loath checking my voicemail on our office phone system.  It feels clunky, old and poorly thought out.  My voicemail box had yet again reached capacity and I struggled to find the motivation to delete all the messages when I realized my pin had changed.  What was so wrong with just #?! Luckily I had seen an article that talked about using Google Voice for just voicemail management.  Perfect. I have the service already, and it really couldn’t get much worse than my current system.

I currently have two phones that I use, my direct line at our office, 413-258-7159 and my cell, 203-710-5028. *Side note: More on why I don’t mind putting those out there will come in a later post on transparency.* Here is how the setup works.

First, my Google Voice account is set to ‘Do Not Disturb’. This sends all calls to my Google Voice number directly to my voicemail where you’ll here sultry sounds of my voice.

Second, I set both my office and mobile (iPhone) to forward all missed, busy, and service unavailable calls to my Google Voice number. For the iPhone use the following:

• Busy Call Forwarding: Dial *67* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.
• Call Forwarding No Reply: Dial *61* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.
• Call Forwarding Not Reachable: Dial *62* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.

That’s pretty much it.  This setup means that you’ll get access to Google Voice’s transcribing service (voicemails are transcribed and emailed to you). I receive notice of new voicemails via text message and email with a link to the original voice recording.

This might not be the finial solution and it may not be the best but it certainly feels like a step in the right direction.

Blogs and Blogging

It turns out I’ve been busy…

I was going to start this post with a line like, “It turns out I’ve been busy…”

Both of those are the same thing, and I hate it when people say something when they say say they’re not saying it. Like the classic, “not to interrupt but [interruption here”.  That said I’ve completely ignored tumblr and more importantly to me I’ve ignored a bunch of blogs that I want to read, comment on, and contribute to the discussions that take places around those posts.  That’s why I’ve decided that I’m going to set aside a certain amount of time to devote to blogs and blogging every day.  I haven’t decided how much time that will be yet, but I’ll start with some amount and adjust as needed.  More coming soon.