GVMax makes Google Voice and iPhone Play Nice

To my “regular” readers:  I know this post only really targets iPhone users…and to those of you who are iPhone users, it only targets those who use Google Voice. I’m not trying to ignore the rest of you…I just want to share this information. I’ll try to post something soon that’s not so “user specific”.

Recently I posted a review for Meebo for the iPhone because of how seamless it made the transition back and forth between desktop instant messaging to mobile instant messaging. In that post, I mentioned using GVMax with Google Voice. I had put off writing a second post about GVMax because I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say about it. But today I found a little nugget of information that I just HAD to share.

For those of you who have an iPhone or iPod Touch and have a Google Voice number, you know how infuriating it is that Apple has not only denied the official Google Voice app, but subsequently pulled all apps directly related to GV. Unless your phone is jailbroken, you are stuck using the web app. It works, but let’s face it, it’s a little clunky. I’m using an iPhone 3G and the site just feels painfully slow, even on WiFi. Plus, it uses the phone’s native dialer instead of allowing you to choose which phone to ring, so iPod Touch users are “out of luck”.

Until GVMax.

What you first find out when you read about GVMax is that you can use it to send your Google Voice SMS messages to the IM client of your choice (it uses your Google Talk account). So you can IM back and forth from your computer, from your phone, from wherever, and the person you’re talking to is getting text messages on their phone. Spiffy. Additionally, if you read the user’s manual, you will find that you can (by virtue of your contact groups in Google Voice) send group text messages.

What I somehow overlooked until today is that you can initiate your Google Voice calls from your instant messaging client. I didn’t see this in any articles I read about GVMax, and somehow I overlooked that when scanning the manual. This is an under-emphasized feature! (iPod Touch users…take note!)

So here’s how it works:

First, you have to have Google Voice. You have to sign up for GVMax. I’m not going to go into those details. Once you start working with the text messaging and getting voicemail transcriptions sent to you by IM, you start building up your GVMax contact list on your buddy list. In the initial stages, it’s a little frustrating as you are working on authorizing the contacts to add you to their “buddy list” since each GVMax contact is a new contact on your GTalk account. You can jump start the process if you read the manual and use the gga {number} command to add the numbers to your contact list (hint, don’t use the brackets). By the way, if that phone number is in your Google Voice contact list, it will show up on your buddy list as “ContactName [Phone]”.

So you get a text or a voicemail and you want to call the person back. First you have to designate which phone you want to use. If you don’t already know your phone index (which you probably won’t if it’s the first time you’re doing this), in any GVMax contact type “ggp” (without the quotes) and send the message. This will send you a message that says something like:

“retrieving available forward phones…”

“1. Home Phone 12145551212
2. Cell Phone 12145551314”

So if you want to use “Home Phone” you then type “ggp 1” (again, without the quotes) and then send the message. You’ll get a response that says something like:

“Foward phone set to : Home Phone”

Now you’re ready to make a call. And as far as I can tell, it keeps that phone selection until you change it, so you don’t have to do it EVERY time you are ready to make a call, just when you want to change the designated phone.

So, if you already have the contact up on your IM client that you want to call (either because you got an SMS or voicemail transcript), you just have to type three little letters – “ggc”. Send the message.

You’ll get a response that says something like: “Placing call to 2145551919, +12145551212 set as forwarding phone”

Then – you wait. Your phone rings. You answer. Google Voice connects your call (the same way it would if you were using a desktop browser to place the call). Awesome.

If you want to call a number that isn’t on your contact list, no sweat! Just open ANY GVMax contact and type “ggc” followed by the number. Like this: ggc 2145558282. It’ll treat it like it did the call to your contact.

How awesome is that?

So using GVMax, you can get true FREE Google Voice SMS through IM. You can initiate calls through that same IM client (even on the iPod Touch!). Oh, and you can play your voicemail, too. The transcription includes a link to the audio. It’s not perfect, but in my opinion it’s more smooth than launching the browser, waiting for the page to load, clicking on a link for contacts, waiting for the page to load, clicking on a contact, waiting for the page to load, etc.

You know, I’ve been using GVMax for SMS and voicemail over IM for several weeks now…and I kept thinking “too bad I can’t just hit a button to call this person back.” If only I’d read the manual thoroughly!