This post is part of a series on That INDIE Dude called “Uber-YOU” - all about using web 2.0 and other connected technologies for the greatest impact and productivity possible!

Uber-YOU #3: Taking hold of your telephone communications.

Telephones, especially mobile phones, can be one of the worst time wasters around.  Mobile phones are always tied to us: constantly asking us to pick up or text our friends back, and interrupting our work schedule.  Even in the rare circumstance that you see the caller ID before picking up and have enough restraint to not talk to John or Crystal while you’re trying to get work done, what happens when you’re like me and use the phone for business?  You can’t NOT pick up calls from business clients in case it’s a work emergency or a new job lead.  So what happens then?  

You might be tempted to lose hope and decide we’re always destined to lose hours of productivity every day to that blasted device.  Don’t do it!  There ARE solutions — even free ones.  Here’s a run down of a couple great online services for taking control back of your telephone communications.

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GrandCentral

I found GrandCentral around a year and a half ago and fell in love immediately.  The amount of time this free Google-owned service has saved me is staggering.  It’s given me back control of my tele-communications in ways I never thought would be possible again.

So what is GrandCentral?

Here’s the run-down:

In it’s most basic form, GrandCentral is a virtual phone number.  It exists only in the GrandCentral switchboards and forwards to whatever phone you set it to.  This is what allows you so much control — since a GrandCentral number (local to the U.S. area you select) is completely virtual, you have complete control of it through their online user interface.  These are beyond the awesome benefit of not having to give anyone your ACTUAL phone number.

Here are some of the amazing things you can do with GrandCentral: 

• Filter incoming calls.  You can place contact numbers into different groups and filter them based on these groups or individually.  Where can you filter them?  Well, you can have them go directly to your phone, directly to voicemail, or even have them receive a “number out of service” message (great for those pesky stalkers and telemarketers).  
• Screen calls and Listen-in.  Miss the days of hard-wired answering machines where you could pick up halfway through the message and pretend you were just in the bathroom?  Only want to talk to so-and-so if it is urgent?  No problem on both fronts.  When you receive the call, you’ll get notified who is calling (it asks them before ringing through to you), you’ll get the option to send the call to voicemail, OR ListenIN to them leaving a voicemail with possibility of picking up part-way through.  This has saved me a TON of interruption time.
• Receive voicemails by e-mail or SMS.  With GrandCentral, you can choose a number of VISUAL ways to receive your voicemail.  I especially love the voicemail by e-mail feature.  I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a meeting or without service, but still had wireless access on my laptop and gotten my GrandCentral voicemails through e-mail.  Their message management interface online isn’t too shabby either.
• Record phone calls ON-THE-FLY.  No, you can’t record the calls without them knowing (sorry, no secret agent applications here), but you can still record a conversation for records.  This would be great for business meetings/discussions.
• Advanced ring-through choices and features.  GrandCentral actually lets you choose which phone the number rings through to, and you can schedule it based on the time of the day.  Know that you’ll be at home in the morning, at work in the afternoon, and at the workshop in the evening?  No problem:  you can set all the numbers on a schedule so it rings those numbers at those times.  On top of that, you can even switch which phone you’re using in the middle of a call by having GrandCentral ring through to a different one.
• Greetings and Ringback tones.  Like any mobile or VOIP service out there today, you can record/choose your own greetings and ringback tones.  The cool thing about GrandCentral is you can choose them based on who is calling you — having a business greeting for business calls and a personal greeting for friends, or however else you want to split things up.
• Click-to-call and web-call.  The last of the features that I actually use are click-to-call and web-call.  Click-to-call just lets you go through your online contact list and click the person you want to call.  GrandCentral rings your phone, and then theirs, saving you the hassle of typing in their phone number.  Web-call is a little different, actually allowing other people to click a button on your website to call your GrandCentral #.  There’s an example below that will call my phone.  Why am I not worried about it?  I can block you with my awesome GrandCentral controls if you’re annoying me

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RingCentral

 

Want to go the extra mile?  It’s not free, but for a small monthly fee (anywhere from $10 a month to $100 a month) you can get a service that apparently makes GrandCentral look like childs play.  I’ve not used RingCentral yet, but the list of features is staggering: Online faxing support, toll-free numbers, extensions to get to your different lines, voice-activated menu navigation (ever wish you had one of those annoying corporate toll-free lines where people have to say numbers to get through the menus?), and MUCH more.  

Because of the price I wouldn’t really look at RingCentral for personal use, but if you run a small business, want to look professional to impress some investors, or are a big-time freelancer, it might be worth it.  For a great run down on all the extras you get with RingCentral, check out THIS article from Technology Evangelist.

Have any telephone efficiency apps or tips of your own? Leave them in the comments below!

Tags: communications, free-lancing, uber-you

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Indie Life, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.