I love exploring technologies and figuring out how to leverage the free (or very cheap) ones.
SHAMELESS PLUG: At the Hawaiian Islands Ministries Honolulu 2010 Conference, March 4-6, I will be leading a breakout session on the use of technology and social media for churches. Be there!
My latest quest is trying to figure out how to chain and combine a few telecom systems.
Google Voice provides an inbound telephone number you can pass out to everyone. That number can be configured to ring your cell phone, your office phone, your home phone, or any combination of those… it can ring all three at the same time, if you’d like, and much more. http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html
Skype is another, different, communications system that I like and use. It is a computer-to-computer voice & video connection, but adds the option to place phone calls to landline or cell phones.
So here’s the scenario: next April I will be in Korea for a couple of weeks taking some classes and participating in a leaders’ meeting. Using my iPhone in Korea presents some technical issues, not to mention the possibility of a whopping ATT bill from downloading the hundreds of spam emails I get each day. What I would love is the ability to chain my Google Voice number to my Skype account, which would allow people to reach me in Korea any time my computer was on by calling my Google Voice number (which has a North Alabama 256 area code), and the call would seamlessly transfer to my Skype account, and “ring” wherever I was. Good idea, isn’t it?
Except that the two services operate on different protocols, and don’t play well together. If there is a way to make it work, I will find it, and I will post step-by-step instructions. (If you have a work-around, let me know!)