and in the darkness bind them! Oh wait, that was a book … then a movie … and it was about a ring, wasn’t it? What I’m writing about here is the GrandCentral service. It offers the concept of a Uninumber … one number that will ring all of your phones at once. It will also centralize your voicemail. And the best thing is, if you only have 2 numbers to centralize … it’s free! A premium plan is offered at $15 a month, which allows to 6 phone numbers, voice messages preserved forever instead of for 30 days, etc., etc.
No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.As a bonus, all messages now land in a single voice mail box. You can listen to them in any of three ways. First, you can dial in from any phone (a text message arrives on your cellphone to let you know when you have voice mail). If you call in from your cellphone, you don’t even have to enter your password first.
You can also play your messages on the Web, at GrandCentral.com, and download them as audio files to preserve for posterity. You can even ask to be notified by e-mail; a link in the e-mail message takes you online to play the voice mail. Source: The New York Times
The downside is, now people will have an easier time tracking you down. There are a myriad of additional features as well:
a) Caller Naming: GrandCentral announces the name when you pick up the phone. This is determined either by caller ID or contacts you have imported.
b) ListenIn: When you pick up a call, and after it announces the caller’s name, GrandCentral then offers four ways to handle the call: “Press 1 to accept, 2 to send to voice mail, 3 to listen in on voice mail, or 4 to accept and record the call.” Option 3 is the ListenIn option, naturally …
c) Record Your Call: Besides option 4 above, you can also start recording in the middle of a call.
d) RingShare: Lets you replace the ringing sounds the caller hears with music — any MP3 file of your choice.
e) Phone SPAM filters: A constantly updated DB of telemarketers. Your phone won’t even ring if one of them calls you. Or you can have them tell the caller the number is not in service!
This sounds like something I definitely am going to sign up and try!
