Most of you are thinking, yeah, we know this already, but as I was changing some setting in my beloved Google Voice account I noticed that they allow you to change the number that appears when you received a call from someone. You can have either their number display, which is of course the default and what most people would want. But they also allow you to always have the google voice number show up with every call.

So my workaround is why not just add your google voice number to your top 5 list and give everyone that number. Then change it so that all incoming calls come from your google voice number and never waste your minutes on incoming calls again.

But thats not all, google voice allows you to make outgoing as well, by calling your google voice number, then dialing the number you want to call. So no wasting minutes on outgoing calls either.

Okay, now I know for some of you this just wont work. A lot of us love to always know who is calling before we answer the phone, but google helps with this as well. Google Voice give you control of what numbers you want to ring straight through, but it also give you the ability to have callers announce themselves first and/or just announce their number or name (if in contacts) and then gives you the ability to answer or send to voicemail.

Also, keep in mind you can still give out your real number to the other 4 in your list and anyone else who is worth wasting your minutes on. This workaround is meant to be given out to all those that call you constantly and love to talk for hours or perfect as a business line.

If you think this is something you could really use and want to give it a shot, I have 2 Google Voice invites to give out just leave a comment below and I will pick 2 at random and send out the invites later this week. Just be sure to add the tag “I want an Invite” to the beginning or end of your comment.

The major drawback is that it does rely highly on HTML 5, which if you ask me is a huge issue, being a web developer for 10+ years now (wow I’m old) one of the first things you learn is that people don’t upgrade their web browser and if you site wont work in their crazy old IE 6  then it’s your fault and not theirs. It’s sad and pathetic, but the number version of IE 6 out there is just ridiculous.

Also keep in mind that HTML 5 isn’t supported in IE7 or Firefox yet either. So far IE8 which is still in Beta, Safari 3 and Chrome will support parts of it and of course as always Opera is way out ahead of the pack with the most support of HTML5

I’m sure eventually Google Wave could grow to be something pretty cool. And it will definitely be something loved among the tech savvy crowd, but by the time the rest of the world catches up I am sure there will be something even better a bigger out. Which they will probably not see until the next cool thing and so on. Will this cycle ever end?

If you missed it and want to hang out a watch the 1.5 hour presentation, I have posted the video below. Also be sure to tell me how wrong or right I am about or what you think about Google Wave.