Google bought a company called grand central in 2007 that offers you a phone number that you can use as your entry point to all your phone numbers. So your other numbers may change but your entry point number will be same for life. They stopped accepting new members after the purchase and promised to relaunch it after major improvements. It took them 21 months but they are now relaunching the service as ‘google voice’.
I have been using grandcentral from almost the beginning. It is a pretty handy service and worth checking out. Here are some of the cool new features:
- Text messaging
- Voice mail transcription
- International calling
- Conference calls
Here is a video on google voice: