Organize Your Phone Numbers with Google Voice

I remember listening to my great aunt tell me the story of when telephone lines were installed in their house. The street had a single exchange, and every one's phone would ring on the street for the same call. Each house had a different ring to let the families know who the operator was trying to reach. But that didn't matter, because everyone picked anyway to eavesdrop. When I was a kid it was a big deal to get your own phone number installed and now it seems every twelve year old has their own cell. This growth in phone accessibility has increased the speed and ease of communication, but it has also has a downside. Personally I have a home phone (don't call it, no one answers or checks the voice mail) a personal cell, a work cell and a direct line at work. That is 4 voice mail boxes that need to be checked. How do I handle all that voicemail? I don't. The voicemail overload means I ignore, forget, delay and avoid voicemail. But now Google has come up with a nice solution that will aggregate all your voice mail to one place and send a transcript to your email...the thing that we actually do check every loving minute of the day from our...well, phones.

Google says the service is available to current GrandCentral users and will be open to Google accounts in the upcoming weeks. Apparently you will get another phone number (oh well) but then be able to forward all other phone lines to that number. The service will allow you to screen calls, pickup when someone is leaving a message and send a transcript of messages to your email.

I can't wait to see the Google ads that show up in my email box as a result of a friends voicemail message. That will provide a few weeks of entertainment in itself.

I still don't plan on ever checking my voicemail again, but will finally be able to respond quickly when I see a message pop up in my email...the one place that will be the final resting place for all non face to face communications. Google to ad those later...yes, I spelled "ad" correctly.