How to make a Phone Call from your Computer

If your cell phone is out of charge, and you already gave up your land line, here are two great ways to make a phone call from your computer:


1. Google Voice - Free. Of course you need a free Google account. The best. You also get free voice mail and forwarding services, free SMS text messaging, and free conference calling. Google Voice is only for calls in and to the US and Canada. There's a 3-hour talk time, but no limit to how many times you can call a number.




2. Skype - Not free, but not too expensive. Skype-to-Skype is free but calling a phone (or sending a text) will cost 2.3¢/min or $2.99/month (unlimited). Sending a text will cost 11.2¢/message.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This post has been scraped in violation of that license if you are reading this post on other than http://www.digital-qa.blogspot.com/.

Send Google Voicemails to Your Phone

Note that when the call comes in, it looks just like any other call and you can't tell that is a forwarded call from Google Voice.

1. Go to Google Voice (www.google.com/voice/).
2. Click on the icon that looks like a gear in the upper left corner.
3. Click Settings.

In addition to forwarding calls, you can also indicate things such as:

• Email a message that a call was received to an email address (This is what I do. It includes the telephone number and a link to a Voicemail if one was left).
• Send a text message that a call was received (I do this too.)
• Record a new Voicemail greeting, or your name
• Change the PIN for accessing your Voicemail (Settings, "Voice & Text")
• Choose to have your Voicemails transcribed ("Google Voice can automatically transcribe your new voicemail messages and send you the transcript to the email address and the SMS number you added in the 'Notifications' section")

All for no charge (from Google)!

To retrieve your Google Voicemails, simply call your Google number and key in your PIN. If you need a new PIN, see above.