Question: What’s better than Google Voice?

Ha! Gotcha–it’s a trick question–the answer is nothing. Well, almost nothing.

The only thing better than Google Voice is having it integrate with Asterisk, and that’s exactly what’s about to happen. Here’s an excerpt from Nerd Vittles’ post on the topic:

For today, we’ve set our sights on the Google Voice feature set which is easiest to integrate into existing Asterisk systems: free voicemail message transcription, free calling in the United States, and free GOOG-411 directory assistance. For lack of a better term, we call it… Googlified Messaging™.

Nice. Then there’s this nugget:

It appears the entire Google Voice platform is SIP-based which makes it a perfect fit with Asterisk.

Mmmm…SIP. So here are a few things you can get from Google Voice / Asterisk integration:

• free voicemail message transcription
• free calling in the United States
• free GOOG-411 directory assistance

And keep in mind–this is all from your actual home phone, not just from your mobile or via the Internet (assuming you have Asterisk, of course). Excessively cool stuff; I can’t wait to implement it on my own Asterisk setup. ::