GrandCentral adds support for Gizmo VoIP numbers

Andy and Sue previously sent me some press information on GrandCentral and I finally had a chance to setup an account last weekend. GrandCentral is a service that lets you obtain a single phone number and then tie that phone number to you for life. You can have your home, mobile, and office phone numbers all ring when your new GrandCentral number is dialed and answer it wherever you desire. You will never have to change phone numbers again and more importantly to me is the advanced features and control the service gives you. And just this week, GrandCentral added the ability to tie your Gizmo VoIP number to your account and I already added my Gizmo number.

I signed up for a Gizmo Project SIP number last year, but have not used it too much since I am primarily on a mobile phone and not setup to call from a computer all day. However, I also recently received a Nokia N80 Internet Edition device to evaluate (my review is coming shortly) and Gizmo is supported out of the box on the N80. So now with the N80 IE, Gizmo, and GrandCentral I can see a killer combination developing that will allow people to have complete control over their communications.

My home phone has one of those hardware answering machines that is always messing up and has a limited storage capacity, but I don't want to pay a lot more money for something more advanced. With GrandCentral I can see all my voicemail messages in a list online or on my phone and choose to listen to them in any order I want. I can even store them forever if I want to archive some of them. You can even setup to have your voicemail sent via email. I also had lots of fun setting up The Office theme song as my ringtone so that when people call my GrandCentral number they hear The Office rather than a standard phone ringing on their end of the line.

Some other advanced features in GrandCentral are the ability to listen to callers leaving a voicemail and if you decide you do want to talk with them then you can pick it up. This gives you a features you can get with a hardware answering machine, but from any phone. GrandCentral tells you who is calling too so even if your phone doesn't have caller ID you will know who is trying to reach you. There are many more features of the service and I highly recommend you try it out. The service is FREE for now as it is still officially in beta and in the future there will be paid options for the advanced features. However, there will always be a free version that will include include unlimited inbound minutes, unlimited voicemail (up to 30 days old), and access to all of the core features.