The Insomniac Coder

Image via CrunchBase It wasn't obvious from my first experiments, but the service allows you to receive phone calls, at least as long as you have a Google Voice number assigned. You will need to enable Google Talk in your Google Voice preferences, then you can assign your Google Talk as a target line for your phone contact groups. When I called my Google Voice number from my work phone, I got a pop up in Gmail that let me answer the call. Pretty damn nifty, and the price is right. Related articles by Zemanta Use Gmail to make VoIP calls: Hands-on review (news.cnet.com)

Hours since it was leaked that Google is working on providing free VoIP calls from within Gmail, Gtalk and Google Voice, I got a pop up in my Gmail asking me to install a plugin , and then it showed me this:  That's the good news. The bad news is that it froze both Chrome and IE. I didn't even bother trying it in Firefox . I did manage to make two of our phones ring, but that's about it. I have a very fast dual core laptop on Windows 7 -64, and everything ground to a halt every time I tried to place a phone call. I bet somebody screwed up and let too many people start using the service at the same time. As a norm Google services are released in a staggered fashion, but this just came up and I am sure I can't be the only one having trouble with this.  That said, it is interesting the timing of this release when the people that make the Magic Jack promised a free VoIP service two weeks ago and is already late by close to a week. I guess we'll see about that ......