Today I going to quickly touch on a great web-app that is really much more than that…it’s a service that allows you to choose a single local phone number and then have that phone number be your phone phone number for life. Sounds great. Basically what you get is a single number that people can call to get ahold of you. In the configuration pages, you designate all of the phone numbers that you want to have “attached” to this single number. Then you give that number out to your friends, coworkers, clients and family. The site is called GrandCentral.com.
What happens when they call that number? Well, based on the rules that you configure, ALL of the numbers configured ring simultaneously. That is, you cell, your work, your home, etc. all start ringing. You then just have to answer one of them, whichever one you are closest to. Or, you can let it just go to voicemail. You can access your voicemails over the web or through one of your registered phones.
There are some other really nice features. Have you ever been called by someone who was a talker? Let’s say that they called your GrandCentral number and you answered it on your cell phone. Then they talked and talked and talked so long that you made it to your home (where your cell phone coverage is just bad). Well, with a certain key press on your cell phone, you can make another one of your registered phones ring and you can just transfer the call over seamlessly.
Right now they have unlimited incoming calls and a bunch of other nice features like different ringtones for callers, the ability to listen in to people recording voicemails for you (like screening your calls) and then answer the call, you can block calls, customize greetings for certain callers, and many other things.
I definitely recommend getting a number just to have it. It works pretty well…I had a few issues initially but I think the service is a really nice idea. There are a few feature that I would really like them to fix thought like the ability for two GrandCentral numbers to share a configured number. It will come, I have been told.
