{"id":1273,"date":"2010-08-30T07:47:38","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T15:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2010-08-30T07:47:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T15:47:38","slug":"switched-to-google-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/switched-to-google-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Switched to Google Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/googlevoice_logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1274\" title=\"googlevoice_logo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/googlevoice_logo-300x97.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"97\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/googlevoice_logo-300x97.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/googlevoice_logo.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Today, I made it official.\u00a0 I&#8217;m using Google Voice(GV) as my primary phone service.\u00a0 I had been thinking about this for a while, but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/chat\/voice\/\" target=\"_blank\">recent addition to Gmail<\/a>, where you can call and receive phone calls within Gmail, was the tipping point.\u00a0 There are for sure positives and negatives to this move and there are some things people need to know when using GV.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First, for the positives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Now that I can answer and receive phone calls right from my browser, I  will save my phone minutes when I do this.\u00a0 Calling anywhere in the US  and Canada is free until the end of the year and I&#8217;m pretty sure that  what Google will charge will be pretty competitive.<\/li>\n<li>Free text messaging when I send text from my computer (which I&#8217;m in front of most of the day)<\/li>\n<li>Able to switch calls from one phone to another.\u00a0 GV has this feature where you can switch from one phone to another while you are on a call.\u00a0 For example, if I&#8217;m in the house but away from my computer or I am just walking in to the house and I&#8217;m on a phone, I can press the * key and have it switch to my computer.\u00a0 The reverse is true too.\u00a0 If I&#8217;m on the phone on my computer and I need to run out, I can switch the call to my cell phone and go out the door.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/googlevoice\/about.html\" target=\"_blank\">Other Google features<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now the negatives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mobile to mobile service.\u00a0 If I call people through GV, I won&#8217;t get free Verizon to Verizon calling.\u00a0 They won&#8217;t get it either.<\/li>\n<li>Friends and Family.\u00a0 On my Verizon plan, I can call a certain amount of people (5 per line) for free.\u00a0 In order for me to still get this, I&#8217;ll have to switch between my GV # and my Verizon #.\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t found the feature to assign certain #&#8217;s to GV and certain #&#8217;s to my regular line on my Android phone.<\/li>\n<li>Managing multiple #&#8217;s and switching people.\u00a0 Because of the above negatives, I&#8217;m won&#8217;t be using GV exclusively, but just as my main line.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are some things to know about using GV on Android:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When you make or receive calls, you still get charged minutes.<\/li>\n<li>When writing text messages, that will still count against your text messaging.\u00a0 (I&#8217;m not sure about receiving text messaging through GV.\u00a0 I think it actually uses your data plan).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, there are other concerns that people have.\u00a0 Google does have a lot of info on me and there is some concern about privacy issues, but I just think that the positives and the convenience of having everything in one place is just something that I can&#8217;t pass up.\u00a0 One thing that I am working on is making sure I have a backup of everything.\u00a0 If Gmail is down or if I don&#8217;t have internet or cell access, then I don&#8217;t want to be left stranded.\u00a0 Updates on my progress to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I made it official.\u00a0 I&#8217;m using Google Voice(GV) as my primary phone service.\u00a0 I had been thinking about this for a while, but the recent addition to Gmail, where you can call and receive phone calls within Gmail, was the tipping point.\u00a0 There are for sure positives and negatives to this move and there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patrickchang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}