If you have an iPhone and a Google Voice account and were disappointed with Apple's decision to reject all Google Voice related iPhone apps then you will be happy to know that you still have couple of options to use Google Voice on your iPhone.
If you have not jailbroken your iPhone then you can checkout Google Voice Speed Dial Bookmarklet generator developed by David Friedman of Ironic Sans.
It is essentially an iPhone web app that generates bookmarklets for anyone you want to call with Google
Voice, allowing you to organize your contacts as Safari bookmarks.
To get started, you need to point your iPhone's Safari browser to http://www.ironicsans.com/gv/ and follow the instructions provided to turn your contacts into bookmarklets so that you can just tap to call the contact.
You need to enter some credentials, which are specific to your Google Voice account (which needs you to login to your Google Voice account on your computer), your iPhone number, and the number of the person you'd like to call.
Tapping on the "Generate" results in the bookmarklet getting created for that Contact. Bookmarklets are small javascript scripts that can be saved as in a normal bookmark. You can now tap on the bookmarklet to call the Contact.
David has clarified that:
No phone numbers or any other information is sent to my server. All the magic happens on your end.
One of his site's readers has created a Phython script "that will take all of your Address Book contacts and convert them to
bookmarklet links in a html file. You can import those links to your
Safari bookmarks and then sync with the iPhone."
I admit this is not very useful if you compare it to the Google Voice application that Apple rejected but it is better than nothing.
If you have jailbroken your iPhone then the better option would be to install the native GV Mobile iPhone app developed by Sean Kovacs, which was one of the third-party apps that Apple first approved and then removed from the App Store along with Google Voice app. It is now available on Cydia for free.
GV Mobile allows users of Google Voice to:
- dial numbers (domestic for free and international at a variable rate) via the iPhone’s address book or typing in on the keypad
- send SMS messages
- retrieve and delete recent call history
- playback and delete voicemails
- take calls from different phones other than your iPhone
- add, delete, enable, or disable the phones that Google Voice forwards calls to
As always, please let us know how it goes, and if you found this useful.
[via Ironic Sans and Sean Kovacs website]
