Google Voice Mashup
(Everything below is covered in the video.)
Today we’re announcing a mashup of Skydeck and Google Voice that gives you the core features of both for free.
First, in case you don’t know, what is Skydeck and what is Google Voice?
Skydeck is your cell phone online. All your calls, text messages, voicemails and contacts are backed up on Skydeck.com and you can search, read, and reply to your messages (by voice or by text) from Skydeck as if it were your cell phone.
There’s no change to your phone number or the way you use your phone. The Skydeck app on your phone backs up all of your contacts, calls and texts to Skydeck.com. If you don’t answer a call, Skydeck takes a voicemail, converts the speech to text, and sends you an email. If you are at your desk, you can call or text people from Skydeck. The call appears to come from your cell phone, so your friends will know who it is.
The catch? Skydeck can’t help you with your other phones, and the full version of Skydeck isn’t free.
Google Voice is a cool new service that ties all your phones together with one new number that rings them all. You answer the nearest one. But if you use a cell phone most of the time and you just want to manage it online using Google Voice, it doesn’t work very well:
* You have to change your phone number
* You have to change the way you make phone calls and place all your calls through Google
* If Google Voice is down, no one can reach you at all
What you really need is for Skydeck to manage your cell, and for Google Voice to manage your other phones. That’s what mashups are for.
Sign up for the free version of Skydeck and it will keep track of all your contacts, calls, and texts. Starting today, if you go to My Account → External Voicemail in Skydeck, we’ll show you how to configure your phone so that the calls you miss go to Google Voice. You can tell Google to try all your other phones first, or go straight to voicemail. Either way, the messages are copied to Skydeck, so that all your cell phone calls, texts, and voicemails are in one place.
It’s all free. There’s no need to change your number, no need to change the way you make phone calls, and if the whole Internet goes down your cell phone is not affected.
Why are we doing this? It’s cool. It costs us very little. And if some people decide to upgrade to the full version of Skydeck to take advantage of our near 100% accurate voicemail transcription or unlimited domestic calling (without using your cell phone minutes), we won’t complain.
That’s how you get the core features of Skydeck and Google Voice for free. Go crazy.
Very cool!
Can you help us get into GV so that we can try this out?
I wish we could David! We have no idea when Google Voice will be open to all.
Sweet. I’m doing this today. Nice work Jason.
Alright, I joined but I don’t see were to connect to the mashup…?
I scanned the page – found where to look
What about call screening, blocking or routing?
Jonathan,
You can still screen calls if you tell Google to call your cell phone back before taking a voicemail. You lose routing, since by definition all calls go to your cell phone first. You lose blocking for now; Skydeck will add support for call blocking independently if enough users ask for it. If those features are important to you, this is not a solution for you.
As one who began using GV/Grand Central in 2005, I’d vote in favor of call blocking. It’s a great feature. As for the mash-up of these two services, it’s makes a lot of sense, although I won’t be able to use the app until I’ve replaced my Java-based phone. Now, can you just do something about the flash website?
Well…this does sound like a cool concept. However, I am concerned with privacy issues. I wonder if this backup of my calls and texts are similar to backup to web services of files on a home computer where once your data leaves your home network you lose your privacy. Lew enforcement agencies or the government can access your data without getting a search warrant against the user because the user no longer “owns” it once it leaves the home system. I would encourage everyone to read the privacy and terms of service before jumping onto anything like this.
Seree, we take privacy very seriously and I would urge everyone to read our privacy policy. Our position is that this is your data, and we will never share it with anyone without your permission – or a warrant.
i want this mashup
want this too
Bummer, it looks like sprint charges .20 cents per minute for call forward no answer and call forward busy…http://tinyurl.com/p39dbj
That could add up fast. Any way around this?
Google Voice invites- sign up here:
https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/
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[...] via Skydeck [...]
My contacts have been deleted randomly and changes made on skydeck dash board have been deleted as well or no longer appear on the dashboard. Is there any support for these kinds off issues? Not happy about my contacts being deleted, you only find that out when you are looking for them. I would suggest that the sync push only one way and use an app to sync with any new updates. I have seen this same issue with other sync products. Developers need to think more about roles and which sync is going to be the master writer for any data that is being synced.
Julian, I believe our support team has reached out to you directly. None of your contacts have been lost. We do see problems when people sync Google Contacts to Skydeck, sync Skydeck to their phone, and sync their phone to Google Contacts independently – the round robin confuses all three. We’re working on a way to detect that.
Any way around the Sprint call forwarding charge (.20 per min.)? http://tinyurl.com/p39dbj
Not that we know of. Since Sprint is the only cell phone company that charges a fee for call forwarding, we expect the charge to go away at some point.
Great video, very clear and with a solid reason to use Skydeck.
What if I have a company cell phone ?
Thanks Patrick. It should work fine, unless your company places severe restrictions on downloading 3rd party software to your phone.
During setup, we give you the option of importing your call history from your cell phone account to get you started. You probably won't have access to that, but as I said it's an optional step.
If I could get into google voice, this would be awesome!
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[...] check out the Google Voice-Skydeck Mashup. I’m still waiting for my invite to Google Voice. [...]
Jason,
I'm a long time GrandCentral (And now GoogleVoice) user, GoogleVoice has infact become my one and only number. Why have you pitched skydeck to ONLY cellphone and some fixed line users ?
Jason,
I'm a long time GrandCentral (And now GoogleVoice) user, GoogleVoice has infact become my one and only number. Why have you pitched skydeck to ONLY cellphone and some fixed line users ?
DJ, to answer that question properly I'd have to post our whole business plan in the comments to our blog. Briefly, we think you're the exception, not the rule.
Jason, With all due respect. It takes one to know one.
If you want a google voice account, you will need to either scrounge the internet for an invitation or request one from google.
Those who haven't already requested their invitations just missed out, Google sent out invitations to everyone who had been waiting. I suggest you request an invitation RIGHT NOW so the next time they mail out invites you will be included.
I was a paying user of SkyDeck. I recently got an email saying that my account type was no longer going to be available. There doesn't seem to be any new “paid” feature sets – just the free one. What's the deal? Are you closing up shop? Merging with Google?
None of the above Rick. We cut one premium feature – in favor of mashups like this one with Google Voice – and we will soon announce some new premium features. Thanks for being a customer.
I'm all about mashups… but it doesn't explain why I can't choose a “premium” account when I'm logged in. I made the mistake of downgrading because I didn't think it'd matter if my account was going away and now I can't get the cool features back again. How do I go about upgrading again?
App development for iPhone being worked on? Thanks.
Yes!
Part “2″ is where all of this fails for me. how do I add “zd0gvw1x@vm.skydeck.com”? Google sais that its sending the email for verification, but don't see how I respond to it. Can you help?
Same here..how are we supposed to verify the email??
Pete and CopDoctor, we forward the verification email to the email address that you use to login to Skydeck – just like your voicemails, going forward. If you haven't gotten it yet, check your spam folder and add skydeck.com to your whitelist.
Oh man….I feel dumb lol…all 9 requests were in my spam filter…darn gmail haha. Thanks Jason, love the service!! Keep it up!
i have 20 invites
mich1248@gmail.com