Anyone hear about this? - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS

12/04/2008 10:14:26 AM · #1

Google Grand Central

You are going to go nuts over what this thing can do!! Imagine having ONE number to give out to EVERYONE and it being routed to exactly the phone you want: Home, Cell, Voicemail, Business... and being able to set it all up online!! No more pushing buttons and waiting for prompts! :) yay! I am sick to death of the phone company not offering voicemail where I live or Call Waiting Caller-ID. This service is like what I used to dream of.

What do you guys think? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Don't care? :)

Strikeslip

Canon EOS-5D

12/04/2008 10:19:34 AM · #2

Effing Yankees.

Can a Canuck use this? It sounds awesome.

robs

Canon EOS R6 Mk II

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

12/04/2008 10:19:49 AM · #3

Had several in the past.... Fax & Phone... Yours for life... then they start charging $$$ to keep it. Will see but meh right now....

AmeedEl-Ghoul

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

12/04/2008 10:20:57 AM · #4

It all depends on the quality of service, it might sound perfect .. as long as it works as advertised,

12/04/2008 10:23:21 AM · #5

Originally posted by Strikeslip:

Effing Yankees.

Can a Canuck use this? It sounds awesome.

I suppose you could route your numbers TO wherever, but I think you'd have to have a stateside number :)

12/04/2008 10:25:02 AM · #6

Originally posted by robs:

Had several in the past.... Fax & Phone... Yours for life... then they start charging $$$ to keep it. Will see but meh right now....

Agreed. Kinda scary on the $$ front. I do appreciate that it is Google though. They still aren't charging for their Analytics service and people said they would. I would love it if they kept something like this free as well. :)

CEJ

Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

12/04/2008 10:27:43 AM · #7

Don't care. Just read the site - features, how it works, etc. Just can't see using it to any benefit. I guess it goes along with the fact that my phone at home rarely, if ever, rings and my cell phone, in the time that I have had it, has never actually rung while I was in a position to answer it although there have been at least two times that when I turned it on there were messages waiting. I think I have made a total of a dozen or so calls with it.

I guess what confuses me about all this technology and new ways to use it (remember too that I am in the 'technology development business') when it comes to phones is just a few years ago, pre-cell phones, did people's lives suffer because they couldn't stand in line at a store and talk to someone (I find this very rude) or drive in traffic while talking to someone who is not in their car? Why has it become that EVERYONE HAS to have a cell phone - including children, young children? Why is it that people leave their house, get in their car, and immediately have to start talking on the phone?

pamelasue

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

12/04/2008 10:48:05 AM · #8

have you checked out Magic Jack? I know a few people that are using this and love it ...

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

12/04/2008 11:11:06 AM · #9

Originally posted by pamelasue:

have you checked out Magic Jack? I know a few people that are using this and love it ...

I have read up on it. Thing about that one is you gotta have a high speed internet connection to use it and I get a pretty good discount from my phone company for having DSL and home phone service with them. Plus, it's yet another phone number.

I am sure that people with cable internet would make a lot of use of magicjack.

Sure wish they would bring cable up this mountain :)

What is appealing (to me, anyway LOL) about Grand Central is that there is one number that you can give to everyone and the service will route them wherever they need to go. It's like rolling your cell, home, work, business, etc... phone into one big one. It's not a free phone service.

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

12/04/2008 11:13:45 AM · #10

Originally posted by TCGuru:

Sure wish they would bring cable up this mountain :)

Why can't you use satellite to connect? It's what my sister does and it works fine for her...

R.

CraigD

Sony DSLR-A900

Lensbaby Composer

12/04/2008 11:19:08 AM · #11

I've had the same number for 10 years and have moved like 7 times including halfway across the country.

karmat

Apple iPhone 7

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L USM

12/04/2008 11:22:30 AM · #12

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Originally posted by TCGuru:
Sure wish they would bring cable up this mountain :)

Why can't you use satellite to connect? It's what my sister does and it works fine for her...

R.

Just out of curiosity -- does she live on a mountain, or near a mountain?

We have satellite for our Internet, and it does okay except when there is heavy cloud cover and there are leaves on the tree. We also live on the north side of a mountain and the satellite people were really hesitant to 'service us' at one point.

Just wondering if geography truly effects satellite, or if it is my imagination.

(We don't have cable in our neighborhood either)

12/04/2008 11:22:56 AM · #13

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Originally posted by TCGuru:
Sure wish they would bring cable up this mountain :)

Why can't you use satellite to connect? It's what my sister does and it works fine for her...

R.

We used to, before DSL appeared. It was much more expensive than our DSL is. Almost $40.00 more a month. Plus, every time it rained, we lost our connection. :)

ETA: @ karmat: Funny thing, you would THINK it would work better up here but they ended up having to put our dish wayyyyy out in the field to get a signal :-/

Message edited by author 2008-12-04 11:24:10.

12/04/2008 11:53:32 AM · #14

Back to the original GrandCentral topic -- does anyone here have an account yet? It looks like you can only get an account to play with if you are invited from someone else who has an account (like the original gmail accounts).

If so, I'd love to invite you to invite me. :P (Is that like inviting myself to a party?)

Canon RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM

12/04/2008 12:21:13 PM · #15

Nope, sure don't, but I am on the reservation list :)

Mr_Pants

SiPix Blink

12/04/2008 12:27:30 PM · #16

I think I'm missing something here. It seems easier to me to just give out my mobile no. That's always with me anyway, no matter where I am.

mindbottling

Canon EOS R6

12/04/2008 12:34:56 PM · #17

Perhaps it's my line of work (crisis & mental health counselor), but I don't want all my calls to come through on the same phone. When I'm at work, I'm at work and answer those calls. When I'm at home, I answer my personal calls.

Canon RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM

12/04/2008 12:45:02 PM · #18

Originally posted by mindbottling:

You can route which calls you want to go where. That's what makes it so nice. Everyone dials one number, they go where you tell them to go. That way, no one from work could ever call you at home if you chose it to be so. Plus, I adore the community SPAM filter. :)

@MrPants: I live in an area where there is often not cell reception. My cell number is on all of my business cards. If I am out of area (in my house) I would like it if those calls rang through :)

mindbottling

Canon EOS R6

12/04/2008 12:55:21 PM · #19

Originally posted by TCGuru:

If I'm routing my calls to go to different locations, I guess I'm not really understanding the purpose of having a single number. It would pretty much remain the same as it is now, only everyone would be dialing the same number and I'd still get my calls where I want them (as I do now with my personal cell and my work cell).

12/04/2008 01:03:52 PM · #20

Originally posted by mindbottling:

Just one number to give out to everyone. No need to remember 5 numbers. :)

I have around 5 just for me and I would love to be able to forward all my phones to go to my ma's house when I am there with just a click of a button rather than having to call her to do it on each one (like I have to do w/the phone company call forwarding feature).

Just convenient to manage it all from one place. Plus, it's free >.< hehe

12/04/2008 03:43:07 PM · #21

Originally posted by TCGuru:

Nope, sure don't, but I am on the reservation list :)

Me, too!

Well, if I get invited, I'll be sure to invite you, too. Not having any luck finding anyone already allowed to play with this yet. :(

There are several offerings like this from various phone carriers and a few employers (I know both HP and IBM have systems like this for their tech staff). I hope google can keep the cost down (i.e. free) ;) once it's publicly available. Between this and one of the free conference call sites, anyone can roll their own telecommunication tools that would otherwise cost several hundred dollars a month.

I understand some people's confusion and "why would this benefit me" questions... In short, if you don't need these kind of tools, then you just don't -- be happy about that. :) But for some folks (like myself), and I expect largely dependent on your line of work, tools and toys like this are a real benefit.

12/04/2008 05:11:06 PM · #22

In the meantime, while we wait for our invites to come.... Check THIS out... I came across a comparison between it and GrandCentral. This looks AWESOME. And you don't need to wait for an invite. ;)

YouMail - Love Your Voicemail

I only found one other post here about it, so I'm not sure if any other dpcers have tried it out... But I'm signing up now, and if anyone's interested, I'll certainly share my opinion when I've played with it for a few days. The demo looks SWEET. DUDE! SWEET! DUUUUDE! SWEEEE--- okay, I'll stop that now...

ETA -- Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, they don't support Alltel. Crud. Well, I guess I can't play with it myself, but if anyone else has experience, feel free to say so.

Message edited by author 2008-12-04 17:14:33.

12/04/2008 06:20:30 PM · #23

Consider the invite mutual LOL!!

I am gonna go check that out right now. Thanks for the linky :)

12/09/2008 01:43:06 AM · #24

Originally posted by TCGuru:

Consider the invite mutual LOL!!

I am gonna go check that out right now. Thanks for the linky :)

Did you have any luck?

I did a lot of digging into GrandCentral, and didn't find a lot of good news. It looks like Google has put this project on the back burner (waaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back...) and hasn't made a public statement regarding it's status in over seven months. I wrote to their press contact email address (from two different addresses myself) and did not receive a reply. There are numerous problem reports on the "official" user forums, but no one from Google/GC appears to be responding.

So, it's future appears to be a little cloudy.

They also stopped allowing users to generate invites many months ago as well; and reportedly "recalled" a large number of unused invites. That being said, there *are* still working invites out there, you just have to look really hard. ebay has become one place -- if you keep your eyes/searches open, you'll see both invites and existing numbers coming up for auction every few weeks. They seem to be very volatile... Some go for as low as $30, others over $200.

I bit the bullet and bought an invite on ebay on Sunday. Worked like a charm, and I have a shiny new GC phone number and have been playing with all the features since. It's a lot of fun, and very useful. The voicemail system is great; I just wish it had a few polished-off features like youmail, but I guess you can't have the best of everything. The click-to-call feature is awesome (just select a number from your address book and select the number you're at, and it calls out to you both.

I have Alltel (with the MyCircle blah blah), and have added my GC number to my free-call-list, so now all incoming calls (and outgoing click-to-calls and voicemail calls) don't rack up any minutes. I might consider stepping down my monthly plan if it continues to work well -- that would make up for the ebay purchase pretty quickly.

Anyway, just wanted to follow-up on this and say that GC still works (for now) -- you just have to do a lot of detective work, or pay some $$$ to get a number.

Did anyone get to try youmail? I can't, since I have Alltel, but most other providers supposedly work with them. If I had any other provider, I think using youmail would be a complete no-brainer.