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105 Comments
- daldredge, on 10/12/2007, -9/+62@zzzbest
What original content does digg.com generate? If it wasn't for piggybacking off of others' content digg.com would not exist. - MagisterJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+33Is there anything stopping me from adding all my friends' numbers to GC, thereby creating one freakin' amazing phone prank?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -21/+51Link to the site itself, not a ***** blog that just piggybacks off of others' content.
Real link:
http://www.grandcentral.com - ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25When it's a blog that doesn't add anything, I agree.
In this case, the author of the blog (LifeHacker, btw, a pretty high quality blog) actually tried the product and provides a bit of a review.
If it linked directly to GrandCentral, I'd glance at it, say "wtf is this supposed to be?" and close it. - Misanthrope, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Oh shut the hell up. I'd MUCH rather have a description from a DECENT blog and THEN go to the site, as opposed to just clicking the digg link and going straight to the site to "try it myself". There's no way in hell I'd use this without reading something about it.
I agree that blogs, often times, are useless and are put here as a way to get traffic to a ***** site. This isn't one of those cases. This is a good, reputable blog that's actually telling me something about the program. A link straight to this program would be retarded. - fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20@daldredge
Ah, but it's just downright annoying to climb off multiple piggybacks to get to the real content. The idea behind not submitting blog links to Digg is to reduce the number of piggyback layers (blogs tend to link to blogs, which tend to link to blogs, which ... may eventually get to the source ... or maybe not if one blog in the chain can't handle the traffic).
@zzzzbest
Personally, I'd consider this particular lifehacker post to be a review of the GrandCentral service. Borderline, I admit, but not completely out of bounds. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Thanks for all the comments. You guys are all over it. Here's the lowdown. First, apologies for the hit on our web servers...had a load balancer issue that's now resolved and adding hardware as well. Should be speeding up as we speak. Also, we've got tons of new phone numbers on order and will be loading them as quickly as you can, so keep checking back for your phone numbers.
The Digg effect is definitely in effect. Regardless, it should be running smoother as of now and we're adding a lot of hardware tonight. Very impressive response by you all.
A few clarifications on the service...its free for all beta users for 60 days. Unlimited inbound calls, all features, etc., and we even give you a credit so you can make outbound calls during beta. After the beta period, we'll have 2 tiers. One tier of unlimited inbound calls, all features, upload 100 mp3s for RingShare, 10 hours of recorded calls, forward to 6 numbers (plus a temporary number), etc., will be $14.99 per month. BUT, there's also a free tier...that will stay free, and it gives you virtually all the features and 100 minutes of connected minutes per month. After that your calls will go to voicemail or you can buy a bucket of overage minutes if you don't want the subscription (overage minutes will roll over month to month until you use them).
For those who say its been done before, I say its been TRIED before, but never with these features. Find me, follow me? That's just for openers. Every call you get you can do a bunch of stuff (record, ListenIn on voicemail, join a voicemail if you want the call, etc.). Also, if you're driving along and need to record something (ie phone number, etc.), just hit the 4 key and we'll start recording for you. Also, we'll save your voicemail online for LIFE for paid users and for 30 days for free users...compare that to the 2 weeks you get from your cell provider. Also, we let you customize how your different callers are treated. Want your work callers to only ring work and cell but not home? No problem. Want to have a custom greeting for your wife or boss? No problem. You can even upload any mp3 to replace the ringsound your callers hear.
Also...the pipeline's full with a ton of other cool features we hope you'll love. Thanks for the interest and feedback...keep it coming!
Best - Craig Walker, GrandCentral - NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Here is an idea. Make three accounts. Have the first number call the second number that calls the third number. The third number calls the first number again. Have the second number also link to like 8 friends. Then call the first number and hang up. It should start a loop and start bombarding you friends with some half second rings!
- Djerrid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Digg for great concept. Anyone willing to be our guinea pig and let us know how well it works?
- fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13If you read the article, the author can be your guinea pig. (wow!)
- cpyle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Very cool concept - is this available anywhere outside the U.S?
- daldredge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Why would anyone want to be that reachable?
- mobajwa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Are they going to offer free services for a while and then force everyone to pay after 1-2 months ?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9One tagline is "never miss a call you want to take, or take a call you want to miss". You're only as reachable as you want to be. You can set what phones ring when different groups of callers call you. Don't want to be reachable, set "Others" to go directly to voicemail and only let "Friends", "Family" or "Work" reach you.
Or, just hit 3 on every call to ListenIn on the voicemail while its being left and only join the calls that are important (by hitting STAR key)...
Either way, we wanted to put you in control to be as reachable as you want do be (or don't want to be)
Best - Craig Walker, GrandCentral - LilyFoxglove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Swap out "friends" for another word, and you have an interesting concept here.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"Grand Central: One number.... For life" (or until our company dies, whichever comes first)
- fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8You don't go out to the movies much, do you? There's always someone there who can't go 113 minutes (plus previews) without yapping at someone.
- MattS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Many have tried. Many have failed. Most of the comments here are valid. The technology is not new, and it can be duplicated manually by using the call forward features of your phone.
I find this type of service very useful for customer facing people - like sales....
Check the fine print tho - free for 30 days or 100 minutes... - NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8And then post the number all over town!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Feel free to try it: it's free. No credit card required. Once you start using it you'll wonder how you can live without the control it provides you over your calls and your messages.:-)
- ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7nothing is stopping them
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The site is grinding to a halt, I'm assuming the digg effect.
If this thing can't handle Digg traffic how confident should I be that it can get that important call to me... - illegalchuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8WWTJBD - What Would The Jerky Boys Do?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5One quick thing on telemarketers....we built this to help you avoid them. If you ever get a message or a call from a telemarketer, you can quickly set them to SPAM and then all future calls from that number will go directly to your SPAM folder. We're working on another feature that will let you do this live while you are ON a call with a telemarketer, and it shoudl be out with the next rev. Other good thing for privacy is that nobody knows where you are when you answer your GC call. Its a phone number that's not tied to a location so you can answer from anywhere and nobody needs to know you're taking your calls from the beach. Finally, if there's a nut job bothering you 24/7 you can set them to spam and they're gone. They can't fill your cellular voicemail, they can't hit 0 to talk to a receptionist to find out where you work, they can't do a reverse phone lookup to find out your white pages info, etc. They just go to SPAM. - Craig Walker, GrandCentral
- thekak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Seems like a great idea and has a good ammount of features. Not sure if it's the best idea for all people in the end... ether way, good stuff.
- silo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5They don't have my area code. :-/
- ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Looks like a quality site. Sure, it's struggling under the load of Digg, but instead of a 403 or something, I get a nice popup saying my request couldn't go through or something. I'd consider that failing elegantly.
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I already hate it enough when people talk at me. The last thing I want is to make it really, really easy for people to talk at me even more!
- rajulkabir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Numbers cost them money. You live in the middle of nowhere. It is not hype if a new startup doesn't offer the same service at every point in the universe from day one.
You must really get pissed off every time a new restaurant opens in some other town. - teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Works damn well for me. Even plays nice with Skype so far. I set up Skype to forward to GrandCentral which then rang the other phones that I plugged into GC. Also recorded voice mails quite nicely, which can be listened to in the browser, and emailed, and probably other things too. But I haven't looked that closely yet.
I just don't see myself using it that much. I just use my cell as a primary anyway. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Too funny. We're loading them as fast we get them...if we got only those first, they're in there. All the others are coming soon. - Craig, GrandCentral
- nicepants, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@ericnmu - "nothing is stopping them"
....the Digg effect appears to be stopping them... :-O - rajulkabir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I cannot think of the last time a telemarketer was so kind as to send me their phone number so I could block it. They always come up as Out Of Area.
- Shriker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5So... I can get barraged by people no matter what phone of mine I'm near. Um. Interesting concept, but I have separate numbers for a reason.
- finkployd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ooops it's back up - ruins the joke.
- redrighthand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Seems like there might be a way to really screw with people by using this. Post a number online and have the forward number be your ex girlfriend? I guess you wouldnt have to use this to do that but it seems like something bad could come from this-
Singing up now - ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Mine either. Then again, I only have a work phone and a cell phone. It would be nice if the cell would redirect to work to save minutes though.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hey guys...
Thanks for all of the comments and interest! Just to let you know the Digg effect is hammering us right now but we are installing new servers and load balancers as we speak (type.) We want to allow everyone to check out what were doing here, so we should have our stuff beefed up in a very short while. And for all those concerned... the free service will remain free. For 30 days you get free access to premium features, but the free service will NOT become a paid service. We are adding more numbers and area codes as fast as we can acquire them as well, so keep checking back for your numbers in the next few days if you're not seeing something local just yet.
Damn this is fun!
Joshua Chiet
Flash Developer, GrandCentral - dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Why?
I can't think of anything sustainable that a telemarketer could get out of this. - CharlesDarwin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Do you guys plan to support plus-addressing?
(e.g. charles.darwin+grandcentral@gmail.com) - Anpheus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Turtles all the way down ;p
(Or should that be pigs all the way down?) - rajulkabir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yep, been doing it for a while now, though I'm using Asterisk. My one number rings straight through to my cell phone wherever in the world I go, without any need for roaming fees - I just get a SIM card and stick it in, then update the number in Asterisk's configuration. At the moment I'm in Australia for a month and I haven't even bothered to tell my office; they can't tell the difference.
It rings different phones based on the time of day (rings my home phone but not my cell phone if I am likely to be asleep, since the home phone is much quieter). And I get a heads-up display on my computer screen before the phone even starts ringing, thanks to app_notify.
I experimented with some other stuff - having it forward calls to me when I'm at a hotel by playing ringback to the caller while it plays a recording to the person who answers the phone: "Room 418 please. Room 418 please." But unsurprisingly that's not too reliable; some hotel clerks are too chatty. I figured this way I could save some money because termination to landlines is often free, but landing on a cell phone in some countries costs me as much as US$0.20 per minute.
Anyway, the sky's the limit. Cheap calls are nice, but it's the ability to totally control your call flow that really makes this VoIP stuff exciting. - Technopundit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So I have to tell everyone I know to call a long distance number south of Lake Havasu, AZ because there are no numbers in my area.
They'll think I've been sent to jail....
I'm certain they will soon offer numbers in my area - for 10 to 20 dollars a month.
Marked as "hype". - redforty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"If you're on a call and you decide that you want to record your conversation, just hit 4 at any time." You can even listen in on people leaving their messages.
Isn't this just another way for a company to keep track of every phone call/voicemail/conversation/etc.. we ever have? Now with EVERY NUMBER we have?! - dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"When you pick up a call that's been forwarded with GrandCentral, you can choose to answer it, send it to voicemail (...), or send it to voicemail and listen in on the message as it's being left in real time"
Unless your non-GC voicemail has the DTMF tones that correspond to one of those options, it shouldn't answer the call, or send it through to voicemail...
However, do the other phones stop ringing when one of them is picked up and promted to chose an option? If so, you'd have to turn off voicemail on the mobile, or something... - Dested, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I tired it "New phone number" is alliance food and drink co. Wtf? Why did they give me an already in use number!?
- AlanKc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I like it. Im not a phone person, this gives me control ;p
- Quiplash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, well I'm in the Canadian prairies. You mean to tell me the closest you can do is Rhode Island?! Oy gevalt.
- dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm sure they have some level of protection for loops like that... And if they don't, I'm sure they will soon enough. (I'm curious to know how fast the connecting is, and if a loop, left unchecked, would crash the computers in charge, or at least clog up the system all nasty like)
- akalol111, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So that is how all those phones rang at the end of lawnmower man...
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