Okay, I know nobody really needs or wants another number to remember. What with all of the account numbers, passwords, PINs, phones, birthdates, and other things stuffed into my mom-fog geek brain, I can’t even shake my head without digits falling out of my ears!
Actually, I was once leaving a phone message for an acquaintance, and when it was time to leave my number for a call back, I forgot it! I forgot my own phone number and had to look it up and call back to leave it in a subsequent message. True story.
Anyway, I signed up for Google Voice a long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…) when it was still in beta testing. A couple of days ago, I finally received my invitation to join, and now I have another number to remember. But this one is cooler than my normal phone numbers.
Basically, Google Voice is a way to manage all of your phone lines through a single number. So if you want people to be able to reach you at all times, you can give out your Google Voice number and have it ring (one ring, get it? haha) all of your other phones at once.
You can receive voicemail, which is automatically transcribed so you can check it like e-mail. You can group your contacts and have their calls routed differently, and record custom messages for different contacts. I’m still getting familiar with the features, so if you really want all of the details, go read about it.
One especially appealing feature of Google Voice is that it’s FREE. The only thing that costs money is using the service to make international calls. Oh, and you can search for your number by area code or letter combination. I got a number that’s easy to remember by making the last 5 digits spell BELLA. Nifty, right?
What do you think? Would you use a universal number with Google Voice? Do you already have one? Or does it sound like just another number to forget? 
WELCOME! I can't teach you how to monetize your blog, but I can offer you some mostly intelligent conversation, moderately geeky tech talk, very funny mom stories, with the occasional rant thrown in for sanity. I'm so glad you're here!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It sounds like just the type of gadgetry I want in my life, needed or not. Something about “just because I can”. My dear husband patiently nodded with as much enthusiasm as he could muster when I shared with him my excitement that I could assign some folks to always go to voice mail!
Geek Mom, you’re my soul sister.
Janet´s last blog post..How a Boy Comes to Love Baseball
i would do it! i am going to have to check this out, thanks for the info
Lizzie´s last blog post..When Bloggers Collide
Hmm. I once had (and suppose I still have) a forwarding e-mail address guaranteed never to need changing, that I could give out, and then have everything from that forward to whatever my current work/home etc. e-mail was. Nice concept, but after six months the spammers found it, and it didn’t have spam filters available, and the end destination mail box couldn’t ferret out the spam because everything good and bad alike was forwarded from the same e-mail. I had to turn it off. Long story short — one wonders if funnelling all calls through a single number will simply make it easier for the annoyance calls to find you?
sue´s last blog post..Southeast Whitesburg Mural–20 Portraiture
Not that I’m important enough to that reachable but I’d love to have one number for everything. I signed up for an invite a couple of weeks ago and I’m anxiously waiting for the green light.
Tyler – Building Camelot´s last blog post..Politics and Fatherhood: I Am Not The Enemy
Well, I put my name and email addy in the little form to get an invite when they let more people in. Could this become a replacement for my landline (which never seems to work anyway) Hmmm… interesting.