Using Google Voice with Outlook’s Dialer
Microsoft Outlook has this very nifty feature where you can connect your computer to the phone line and use your Outlook Contact List to instantly dial someone’s number. Of course, when they created this they needed to add support for using a calling card, as long distance in the same country hadn’t even begun to be free.
Now if you use Google Voice, you can use this to your advantage with the simple addition of just a few seconds to the call.
Continue Reading for Instructions on how to Outlook up to dial through Google Voice
Google Voice is still Lacking
I’ve been a religious Google Voice user for awhile now, so it really bothers me that it is still lacking feature wise. Of course, I’ve been helping with some of these missing features (re: Google Voice for Outlook) but there are still plenty more missing as well as some minor issues I have with the service.
Multimedia Messaging (MMS)
For some reason, Google Voice still lacks this functionality. It can’t be THAT difficult, can it? I mean, the iPhone managed to add it before Google Voice, and if you really want to compete in the mobile business, its kind of necessary to have MMS, as SMS is pretty much irrelevant now.
Not only that, but any MMS that is sent to a Google Voice number is just lost. Couldn’t they at least be forwarded to my email address? I don’t like the fact that I could be losing incoming messages to /dev/null, and its even more annoying having to give out two different phone numbers (one for MMS and one for SMS).
Shortcodes
It is all well and good that Google’s own shortcodes work through Google Voice, but not so fantastic that nobody else’s does. I don’t want to be passing around two sets of phone numbers, and I’d love the ability to just set to spam a shortcode that is getting out of hand and won’t let me unsubscribe (if that ever happens). Developers pay tons of money to set up shortcodes, so why doesn’t Google Voice support them?
API
Google Voice is a Service. I use it with my cell, with my home phone, and with my computer. But in order to make desktop apps or things like Google Voice for Outlook possible, an API is almost necessary. I’ve managed to do it without one, but it still pretty much sucks.
Outlook Mobile Service
Companies charge tons of money for people to have the ability to send text messages through Microsoft Outlook. Adding the very simplistic SOAP server to the Google Voice backend would allow anyone with Microsoft Office to send text messages, forward emails, and receive reminders and notifications for FREE, something that is usually charged 10 cents or more per message. (Combine this with MMS as mentioned above, and it gets EVEN BETTER!)
Internet Fax Service
Google Voice already has “Receive Faxes” as a “Suggest a Feature.” Adding this and providing users on computers a way to send faxes would increase productivity and make the service even more useful to small companies and freelancers.
Keep in mind, these are just a few ways that Google could improve Google Voice, there are tons more.
What do you want to see added?
Somebody loves Google Voice Outlook Mobile Service~ ♥
BareBones Networking (Picture is linked) wanted to use my Google Voice OMS Code, so I took all day customizing the code and getting it working on his server, I’m proud to announce that he is willing to allow public use (please be reasonable with it though, please?) So head on over to the BareBones Networking OMS page, type in your GMail Login, click Setup, and follow Outlook (2007 or 2010)’s Instructions and you’ll be ready to send Text Messages FOR FREE through Microsoft Outlook.
I’ll set up a landing page/site soon that gives the whole setup experience a pretty web interface too (maybe with FAQ for the technically challenged).
Enjoy =)
Y’all Don’t Love Me, Do Ya?
Remember way back in November when I created something so ridiculously awesome I had to learn two whole new web technologies to do it?
If you don’t, or if you just picked up on my blog, that very incredibly awesome something was called Google Voice OMS – It allows you to send text messages through Outlook using your Google Voice account, without having to pay a third party company per-message. Essentially making this very awesome feature in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 FREE.
At first, I didn’t want to Open Source it. I wanted to keep it for awhile and sell it to Google or something if it caught on – but there seemed to be so tiny of a reaction to the post that I published it on Github. Do you guys seriously not like it? I asked for SSL Hosting or Donations three months ago and I haven’t received a single cent to pay for the cost (nor an offer to host).
Not that there was really anything left to add to it, but I’ve pretty much just let the project die. Nobody’s approached me about funding it, or providing hosting for it, and definitely not Google although it would be the best thing in the world to kick-start Google Voice for Businesses.
And I was even thinking of doing something cool like seeing if I could create a twitter client replica of it. But you know what? Never Mind.
Google Voice OMS Code on Github
I pushed the 子猫ちゃん Google Voice OMS service’s code to github, so you can now download it – albeit, to make it work it’ll take a lot of hacking and a lot more editing.
Either way, I’ve gotten no donations and no offers for free SSL hosting, so it looks like this project just will not be seeing the light of day. It’s a shame, I worked a long time to make it work, and it’s obviously something a lot of business professionals would be able to find a use for.
Oh well, you can find the project on github.
Remember to abide by the Usage License!
Google Voice in Outlook
EDIT: I managed to bring this into being thanks to other people generously letting it run on their servers (though unfortunately I can't vouch for the security). You can check it out at http://www.gvoms.com.
Additionally, I've also made the source code available over at https://github.com/navarr/Google-Voice-OMS
If you’re a regular reader to my blog, I’m sure you read yesterday’s post about how Google Voice could gain a head in the business world. At that time, my dream of connecting Google Voice and Outlook via OMS was far from completion, with the only work I’d managed to accomplish being a simple reading over of the related technologies.
Well, late last night a certain gear clicked in my brain, and I spent the entire night awake and coding PHP on a local XAMPP server. But my end result was fruitful – I finished successfully coding an Outlook Mobile Service that allows the delivery of SMS through the Google Voice system.
Here is a video showing it off:
I’m not yet prepared to release the source code for this, though. (Messy, Messy, Mess! as Double D would say). There’s a lot in my mind about it, it took a lot of work and I’m not ready to see forks and duplicate services pop up. (Sorry guys =S). Be on the look out for follow up posts that describe some of the technologies I had to learn to make this possible.
Oh, also – If you’d like; Help sponsor this project (I can’t afford to make it public ATM) with either Free (VERIFIED) SSL Hosting for a subdomain of a domain I own [contact me], or the money to make it public using my current host ($62.40/yr) [donate through my host]. I would be most appreciative if you could offer either of these to get this thing up and running!