Ribbit offers better voice-to-text transcripts than Google Voice

Clark has been a longtime customer of Google Voice, dating back to the days when the free service was an independent upstart called Grand Central.

Google Voice today offers users a single number for their cell, home phone, office phone and more to ring on. Other features include free voicemail, call forwarding and conference calling.

It also offers free unlimited long distance calling in the United States and cheap calls overseas. This could be very beneficial for someone with a monopoly landline who has to pay for expensive long distance calls.

With the voicemail feature, you're able to listen in as voicemails are being left and pick up in the middle of the call -- just like you would with an answering machine. You can also have voicemails automatically converted into a text message.

Basically it's a whole lot of functionality wrapped up in one package!

The most common gripe people Clark has heard is that people were upset when Google was rationing out the service through an invitation-only system. While Clark recently discussed an option that would allow college students to move to the front of the invitation process, that information is now no longer valid.

As of June 22, Google Voice is now open to everyone with no restrictions.

Of course, Google Voice does have competitors out there in the marketplace. Ribbit Mobile is, by the consumer champ's own admission, a better service than Google Voice when it comes to voice-to-text transcription. Ribbit offers a comparable suite of services and is also free for now.