Google Voice - Phone Number Privacy

I've decided to open up a blog to put some of my little musings down about various topics, and to hopefully save the ears of my wife, who puts up with all of my computer and political talk. I love you! Also, there is only so much that you can fit into 140 characters on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/SwainComputers).

So I've had Google Voice for a while now (got my invite at the end of July), and it is a really cool tool that does several things. It combines all of your phones into one phone number that you select from Google's large selection of numbers. Most cities around here have numbers that you can use.

Inside Google Voice, you can put numbers into different groups, which can act differently depending on how you set it up. For instance, if a coworker were to call me, it would route the call to all of my phones: home, cell, and work. However, if one of my friends called me, it would only route the call to my home and cell. You can also set up voicemail greetings for each group, so my coworkers would get a different greeting than my friends. You can also send a group directly to voicemail, or you can set all calls to do not disturb, which sends everything to voicemail. When you get your voicemails, it will transcribe them and send them to you in email, or through a text message. You can then read them.

Also, since this service masks your numbers from incoming callers (and you can call out using Google Voice to use its number), you can give it out to people or companies that you may not want to have your real number. If you start getting strange calls, or you just don't like them anymore, you can put their number in a block list.

Another advantage is that Google Voice is SMS enabled, so you can send and receive text messages through Google Voice.

If you want to see what it sounds like on your end, call, or send a text to 620-603-1776.