

Get the perfect Google Voice number, Grep-style - moonlander
http://michele.spagnuolo.me/blog/2013/3/17/get-perfect-google-voice-number-grep-regex/

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tshtf
This will be great until Google sunsets Google Voice next year.

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niggler
The good thing about google voice is that when it is finally axed, the US laws
require them to give a way to port numbers. That's the only reason why I was
comfortable using their service

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derleth
> The good thing about google voice is that when it is finally axed, the US
> laws require them to give a way to port numbers.

Or what? What's the penalty if they don't?

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niggler
You can do it today:
[https://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](https://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1316844&topic=1708124&ctx=topic)

You can initiate the request from the other side (the new carrier), in which
case it is forcefully wrested in a day. If google still refuses, you can
complain to the FCC.

As for google penalties for holding your number hostage, given that the
business is dying there's really nothing other than an FCC lawsuit (which, as
you imagine, would be for a paltry sum)

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Ricapar
I got into Google Voice very early on. I grabbed a number ending in 1337 in my
area code.

That's now become my main number I give out to people. It brings a smirk to
the few people who get it :)

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jevinskie
I got KOR-DUMP. =)

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jonursenbach
I got ROF-LLOL. It's quite the conversation starter, ha.

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keda
The GV Android app still feel slow even on my N4 and haven't seen new feature
added for couple years. MMS missing and still lacks Chinese language support.

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Zaephyr
I still used Google Voice some; like others mention it's a safe number to give
out for calls and txts when you're not sure how contentious the receiver will
be with the number.

I've switched to RingCentral for my main forwarding number as it has more
features, though there's a monthly cost for that service.

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cypherpunks01
What point is Google Voice at now, usability-wise?

I used it in 2010 and it was slow to make outgoing calls and had some
limitations as far as text messaging from the gv number. There were also some
concerns about its general reliability.

Is anyone using it fulltime now and happy with it?

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THE_PUN_STOPS
I use it exclusively, and it is perfect for me, mostly. I can text from any of
my android devices, or any device with an internet connection almost entirely
reliably. Here's the foibles though:

* No extended MMS support AT ALL. This means no pictures, no participating in group messages from iphone users, and most critically, all text messages sent or received over 160 characters aren't automatically concatenated like on the iphone and in the stock android messaging app, but instead chopped up into several 160 character messages.

* Quirky reliability. It's been getting slowly better, but there are small issues occasionally that are pretty rage-inducing. For example, before February of 2012, there was no queuing for SMS messages. If you tried to send a message and it failed, (which happens a lot) too bad, you got to try again. So when they did implement it, (way after the introduction of the product, I might add) it was slow and argumentative as to which messages actually got sent out and when.

* Product support. Lusting after a basic new feature for GV? Having an issue where some messages are duplicated 4 times and sent to everyone in your address book with the same first name as the recipient? (it happened to me. The solution was to name problem contacts things like John1, John2, etc. until an unspecified update fixed it) Just curious about the future of the product? Too bad. You will be lucky to get a minor update a year later which addresses a complementary issue or concern. No amount of support questions, bug reports, emails, or even community outrage will get anything out of Google concerning GV. It took them months to update it to the ICS app standards, and they did so without any warning or response to users who had been begging Google to fix the buggy Gingerbread/Froyo-imbued app since Honeycomb had come out. For some reason Google is hell-bent on being tight lipped on this particular product and none of its users have any idea if it will even continue existing for the foreseeable future. Now that Google has used it to datamine a bunch of voicemails for transcription data, it feels like we're just along for the ride on this product that we rely on every day.

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justincormack
Multiple concatenated SMS messages are not MMS, should be able to be done
without full MMS support at all. Even old Nokia phones years ago had that
supported.

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THE_PUN_STOPS
You're right, it should. But Google Voice doesn't do it.

