Several years ago I signed up for something called GrandCentral.com.  I worked at the office, at home, and also traveled a lot.  I needed a solution that would allow me to provide people with a single number and they could reach me wherever I was.  GrandCentral provided this plus a few more features.

After a while, GrandCentral stopped enhancing their product and they closed the service to any new users.  This caused some concern but the ability to have one common number was awesome.  Plus, there were rumors that they were going to be purchased by Google!

Well, Google did buy them.  And nothing happened.  For a while, anyway.

Then not so long ago, they rebranded the product as Google Voice and added a lot of new features and functionality.  Here is why you should try to get an account.

One phone number for everything.

When you join, you need to select a phone number.  When I started, I selected a Manhattan area code because I thought I’d be cooler.  When someone calls that number you tell Google Voice to send the call to any number of phone numbers – home, office, cell, whatever.  You can manually set this or schedule it so that it calls your office during the day and home during the evening.  You can even direct specific callers to certain phones.

Intelligent voice mail.

You can send specific callers straight to voicemail and take calls from others.  You can have callers say who they are and then Google Voice will call you to decide whether to take the call or not (but that’s obnoxious). And you can record personalized outgoing messages depending on who is calling.

Make free calls.

With Google Voice you can make free calls to the United States and Canada.

Get voicemail sent to your e-mail.

Google Voice transcribes all of your emails (sometimes they are far off, but I find that humorous) and they can be sent to you by email or text message.  These messages also contain links to the audio of each message.  There are also apps for the blackberry and iPhone that allow you to read these messages.

Have people call you without knowing your number

Do you have a blog or other website and you would like to speak to your readers or users?  Google Voice can provide you with a widget that you can embed on your site.  If users click on it and enter their phone number, Google Voice will call them and also call your number.

How do you get it?

Current Google Voice users are able to send invitations to their friends, much like how GMail was first circulated.  I currently have a single invitation left and can be convinced to send you one (hint: I’d love to get a Google Wave account).

If you don’t know anyone that currently has an account, you can go to google.com/voiceinvite and register for an account. You will be put on a waiting list and provided an invitation in time.

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