GrandCentral Beta — and Invites

Posted on February 14, 2008 38 Comments

I’m in the GrandCentral beta and have been poking around a bit this past week trying to get my head around how best to use this thing. Which is funny since I couldn’t wait to get started when I first heard of it last year. Now that I finally have it, I have this odd sort of stage fright. My contrarian nature I suppose.

What is GrandCentral?

GrandCentral doesn’t replace your phones; we just link them together and help them do more. How do we do that? We give people One Number…for Life^TM - a number that’s not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you.

With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it.

You control where that One Number rings — or you can have it ring to all your phones. Or have some people get routed to one phone, other people to your cell and yet another group always get voicemail. Or maybe just update it as you move throughout the day (there’s a mobile interface too).

There is a ton of options and flexibility to this thing and that might explain why I’m taking this one a bit slower than normal. Want to make sure I know what I’m getting into before I start handing out this number or update my business cards.

I expect to have more on GC after I’ve had a chance to use it a bit.

In the meantime, I have ten beta invites to give away. Just drop a comment below — put your proper email address in the comment form please. It isn’t shown (only I can see it) and won’t be abused beyond sending your invite.

Tags: beta, cellphone, google, GrandCentral

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Comments

38 Responses to “GrandCentral Beta — and Invites”

Peter Motyka on February 14th, 2008 9:28 pm

Hookup the invite. This sounds interesting, it might even inspire me to plug in my home phone again!
David Waite on February 14th, 2008 9:30 pm

Hook me up too
Rich G. on February 14th, 2008 9:45 pm

If I only have the one phone there wouldn’t be much point would there?
Dang!
I hate missing out on the shiny stuff.
Chris on February 15th, 2008 8:12 am

@Peter and David - sent you invites last night. Enjoy!

@Rich - the only point would be if you plan to change that phone number in the future and want to do it seamlessly…

The downside though is not knowing what the GC pricing plans will be once the beta is over.
Michael on February 15th, 2008 2:18 pm

I’ve been toying with GrandCentral for a short while, and find it to be not incredibly relavent for me. The most I’ve done is set it up to forward to my Gizmo account (as explained below), and my cell phone.

One cool feature of the service is that it can forward incoming calls to a Gizmo VoIP account. To set it up, sign up for a Gizmo account if you don’t have one, go to the profile dialog in the Gizmo client, copy the first portion of your SIP address (before the @), and paste it into the phones screen on GrandCentral. Be sure to set the type as Gizmo, and configure the routing options as you please.
Chris on February 15th, 2008 11:19 pm

Hey Michael - it’ll forward to the “free” gizmo or have you purchased an incoming calls option?

I was briefly looking at Gizmo last night but just assumed I’d have to purchase an upgrade to get this working… I’d love to be wrong
Goofy on February 16th, 2008 7:19 am

Just a word of caution…

grandcentral seems to be in “google acquired limbo” - if you wonder what might end up happening, just stop by jotspot.com for an example

Grandcentral (google) managed to lose all of the voicemails a few weeks back, and still havent restored them. so play away, just dont rely on this thing for any serious business (translation: dont give this number out if you actually care about someone communicating to you)
Chris on February 16th, 2008 2:33 pm

Hey Goofy - thanks for the advice and word of caution. Much appreciated.
Michael on February 16th, 2008 5:05 pm

@Chris: I only have a free Gizmo account. I tested this feature, and it indeed works, for free. I assume it’s at no cost because GC does it totally digitally (through SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol).
Greg on February 16th, 2008 10:31 pm

I’ve tried numerous free phone/VM packages, and each one leaves me a little dissatisfied. If you still have another invite, I’m curious to see how a big player like Google would handle this. Cheers.
Chris on February 16th, 2008 10:52 pm

@michael - sweet, for some reason I figured it would only work with a paid account! You just saved me money

@Greg - Invite sent. Let us know how you get along.
Rom on February 17th, 2008 3:23 pm

Hello,

I am just wondering what countries the invites are available to? It seems like a very interesting service..
Chris on February 17th, 2008 3:28 pm

Hi Rom,
It appears to be for US numbers only at this time.
Jared on February 18th, 2008 7:32 am

Could you send me an invite please?

Thanks in advance!
Brad on February 18th, 2008 8:16 am

GrandCentral sounds like just what I need for my crazy travel schedule….I’d love an invite if ya still have some. Thanks.
Chris on February 18th, 2008 3:06 pm

Jared and Brad - Invites sent.
tim on February 19th, 2008 11:10 am

Could I get an invite? or did you zip through the ten?
Thanks,
Tim
Chris on February 19th, 2008 10:46 pm

Hey Tim - invite on the way (and I have a few left too). Enjoy!
Jim Chrapowicz on February 25th, 2008 1:35 pm

If anyone has any invites left, please send me one. Thanks
Chris on February 25th, 2008 7:48 pm

Jim, I was just reading that anyone who is registered with blogger can signup for GrandCentral now…
matt on February 26th, 2008 7:30 pm

invite me please
Rick on February 28th, 2008 11:00 am

If there are any left, I’d LOVE an invite.
Cody Heitschmidt on February 29th, 2008 2:51 pm

I would love an invite. Thanks either way!!!
Nancy Adamo on February 29th, 2008 4:54 pm

An invite would be greatly appreciated! =) Thanks for your consideration!
Chris on February 29th, 2008 8:26 pm

Hi Matt, Rick, Cody and Nancy. As I mentioned earlier, if you signup for a blogger account, you can get into GC.

Here’s a post with more details.
Danny on March 4th, 2008 9:48 am

Hi Chris,

Please send me an invite. I am very anxious to see how this works.

Thanks!

Danny
Jim Cavanagh on March 4th, 2008 12:57 pm

Chris:

I am an author just starting a book on Unified Communications. How timely is that? Please hook me up with an invite to join the GC Beta!

Thanks in advance.

JPC
feroz on March 4th, 2008 5:17 pm

Hi chris,

I heve heard and read a lot about Grand Central but am waiting for some one to send me an invite.

An Invite will be much appreciated.

Thanks
Justin Isenhart on March 10th, 2008 10:19 am

Hey there,

Just wondering if you have any GrandCentral invites left??

Justin
Chris on March 10th, 2008 10:23 am

Hi Danny, Jim, Peroz and Justin. As I mentioned earlier, if you signup for a blogger account, you can get into GC.

Here’s a post with more details.
Jeff Cotton on March 21st, 2008 7:09 am

Help. I’ve been trying to get a number and hasn’t worked as yet.
Chip on March 30th, 2008 5:14 pm

Hi. I’m interested in trying GrandCentral.
Jordan on March 31st, 2008 8:40 pm

this is so cool. please invite me.
Chris on April 1st, 2008 10:25 am

Hi Chip and Jordan - I don’t seem to have any GC invites any more (or if I do, I sure can’t find them now).
gary on April 3rd, 2008 8:46 pm

Please Please pLease send me an invite i had gmail in beta and have had it for yearsi have literally 6 phone numbers and this would make a life as dad husband son Manager and owner proprieter so much easier.
Chris on April 7th, 2008 8:46 am

@gary - sorry, but I don’t have anymore invites to offer. Did you try the blogger thing mentioned in the earlier comments here?
Chip on June 2nd, 2008 8:41 pm

Would greatly appreciate an invite!
Scott on June 28th, 2008 10:39 am

If you have any more invites I would really appreicate it.