JoeTrippi.com

With the recently released Google Voice extension for Google Chrome, you can now call a number within the body of a webpage just by clicking on it. TechCrunch reports on the new features of the extension:

The extension also adds a small box in the upper right of the browser. You can type in a name or phone number and call or sms it from the browser, and read recent text messages and transcribed voicemails (Google automatically transcribes voicemails, usually horribly, but it’s fun).

The extension is buggy on Macs, and you need to use the most recent Chromium build, not the launched Chrome for Mac to use it. Download one of the recent builds here (most recent at the bottom). The extension should work fine for Windows Chrome users.

Google Voice doesn’t have an API, so third party applications need to harvest your user credentials to do anything useful with it. This Firefox add-on, for example, has nice click to call functionality but it requires that you give it your username and password. No thanks.

One last thing – it likely won’t be too long before Google is adding soft phone functionality to the browser directly via their Gizmo5 acquisition. At that point you won’t even need a phone any more. You’ll just be able to initiate and receive calls directly to your computer as you can with Skype and other services today.

You can read more atTechCrunch.com.