Google Voice is an interesting tool for use in the modern phone age. Today people move around the country, have multiple phones, are near different phones at different times, or would like to have very specific call filtering and screening capabilities. Google Voice (GV) certainly offers these features and more. So what's the problem? Today I am going to talk about the issues some people have with voicemail forwarding from their actual cell phone number. While obviously if you are committing to GV you should spread the news to everyone that you have a new phone number. However, that may be a big pain or may not be desired. You may only have a cell phone, as in my case. I use google voice for two reasons only - voicemail transcription and to have a local number for business (it suspicious for a local merchant to have a phone number in a state 500 miles away). So when people locally call my new GV number, I don't really have a problem. However, when you forward your voicemail from your real cell phone you run into some potential problems. Unless you send everyone on GV directly to voice mail ["Do Not Disturb" Mode] your caller can get lost in a loop or have to wait through a very large quantity of rings. If you have no idea what I am talking about, read here and here. 

Given: A Google Voice phone number 555-411-4554  and a cell phone number 555-123-5432

We create a an special extension for each google voice number called that will always go directly to voice mail. So if you call 555-411-4554x86 (86=VM=Voice Mail) you will directly be sent to the Google Voice voicemail. 

So taking the instruction for voice mail forwarding for Verizon Wireless: Verizon (CDMA network): *71[GVnumber] AND *90[GVnumber] AND *92[GVnumber]

A possible implementation (depending on how Google implemented it) might be:

For cell phone number 555-123-5432 set up the following forwarding:

• *71-555-411-4554-[PAUSE]86#
• *90-555-411-4554-[PAUSE]86#
• *92-555-411-4554-[PAUSE]86#

[PAUSE] in the above represents programming in a pause, which may be phone and carrier dependent. On my cell phone, a pause is inserted by hitting the star/asterisk (*) key twice. Here is an explanation for BlackBerries. So what this means is that you are calling directly to an extension (virtual in this case, I am hoping this could easily be handled in Google's software) that is only a voicemail. This would send the caller to your Google Voice voicemail after the same number of rings as your traditional cell phone's voicemail and prevents the possibility of loops because the routing logic is already set to voicemail.

This has some other nifty implications as well:

• You now have an easy way to leave yourself a message (transcribed even) at any time by calling directly into your voicemail. A good idea just popped into your head? Just call up and it will automatically be recorded, transcribed, and will be accessible through a pretty decent search engine.
• Friend's can now text message you with their voice. Some people still do not have smart phones or QWERTY keypads on their phones. So it might be time consuming to send a text message, not to mention the associated fees (for some) and the per-message character limit. I can now leave you a long message using my voice, that you can read at any time. Would be great to use when you know the receiver is in a meeting, but you need to get him a lot of information (and he has his voice mail transcripts forwarded) 
• Grandparents and the technologically illiterate: They don't know how to text message, don't want to text message, but now if they want to leave you the equivalent they can call directly into your voicemail and leave you the long message.
• Other uses include: sending your spouse a shopping list as you look around the fridge; twitter effect- get a large text message to multiple receiver sources with one action; I am sure you can think of more

So Google, are you listening, can you get this done? Common, you know you can target more ads to me if you record and transcribe more of my voicemails, so make it easier for your to make some money. Comments are welcome below. Would especially appreciate input from someone who understands extensions, pauses, etc. 

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