I now have a Google Voice account! Have you heard about this?

Basically, you pick a new phone number, but you keep all of your existing phones. You then set your Google number to forward to your regular phone(s). “What’s the point?” you ask. Well, there’s several reasons why you might do that:

1. The phone number is independent of your other phone numbers. So if I get a new cell phone, home phone or work phone, I just update it in my settings. Either way, people can always keep the same number.
2. You can have your google number ring multiple phones. So maybe during the day you can have your google number forward to your work phone, and in the evening to your home phone, but have it also ring your cell phone, no matter what time it is. So when someone calls that number, they have the best chance to reach me. You can even set this up per person, so maybe when my wife calls I have it always ring all of my phone numbers, but for other people I can redirect them right to voicemail without having any phones ring.
3. You can pick your own phone number (see more on that below).

Now, if you get to pick your own phone number, you know you want to get it right. I spent almost an entire day trying to come up with a number that spelled something cool. I tried my first name, my last name, “pirates”, “bacon”, “packers”, “go pack”, “zombie”, everything the same digit like 555-5555, etc. Nothing. I eventually came up with something that was okay, but it was a lot more difficult than I anticipated.

There are also many other cool features, such as:

1. You can have individual greetings, per caller, on your voicemail. Sort of like YouMail, but more comprehensive.
2. I don’t have a text messaging plan on my phone, so text messaging is expensive. But I can send and receive texts for free to/from my google number.
3. You can set it up so that if you get a voice mail, it will transcribe it to text and send that text to your phone.
4. Remember when we had old school answering machines? You could listen to the caller and then, when you realized it was your brother calling from jail, you could pick up the phone and talk to them? Well now you can do that again, with your voicemail.
5. You can record any call as well as download sound files of any voicemail.

There are tons more things it can do, those are just the ones that stood out. And the best part? It’s free! Ah, Google, what will you think of next? So, if you want my new phone number, let me know (you didn’t think I was going to post it on the Internet did you?)