What is grand central?

Question

What is grand central from google and how does it work

Answer 1

a company that provides services for managing your voice communications. GrandCentral is an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. We think GrandCentral's technology fits well into Google's efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users.

GrandCentral offers many features that complement the phone services you already use. If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones, based on who's calling. This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. The service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more. You can even listen in on voicemail messages from your phone while they are being recorded, or switch a call from your cell phone to your desk phone and back again. All in all, you'll have a lot more control over your phones.

We're really excited to welcome the GrandCentral team to Google. While we're moving their technology over to Google's network, a limited number of invitations will be available to register for a GrandCentral beta account. If you have a U.S. telephone number, you can sign up for an invitation at www.grandcentral.com. Current GrandCentral customers will continue to have uninterrupted access to the service.

Answer 2

It is a VoIP based telephone service.

It gives you a telephone number in a selection of USA area codes.

It includes Voicemail.

It's biggest selling point is its ability to forward all calls to all your other telephone numbers, such as cell phone, work phone, or any other phone numbers you want to forward to.

It is currently free, if you can get an account.

It is also in Beta Test development cycle.  Once it comes out of beta test, it is likely most of its services will be for a price.

I have GrandCentral number in Charlotte, NC.  I don't use it much because I live in Canada and they don't have area numbers for Canada.

Google bought GrandCentral in summer of 2007.  Everyone is waiting to see what Google is going to do with GrandCentral.  There is some speculation it will also integrate with GoogleTalk (which I also use).  Or Google may start a mobile service (like iPhone or the 3-Skype) and integrate it with that too...?

Currently, GC can also accept calls forwarded from or forward to Gizmo Project VoIP service too (which I also have accounts with).

http://www.grandcentral.com/

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This link:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/a...

is where the "quoted text" of the below post came from...