Anyone for a free phone number?

This is actually pretty cool. It's only available by invite right now, but its a free phone number that can be used to ring any or all of your current lines, make nationwide calls for free and deeply discounted international calls.

And something that's really cool is that while you're talking you can switch the call to a deffierent phone line and continue the call, like if you're heading out the door and want to switch a call from your home phone to a cell.

It includes voice mail that can e-mail or text you the messages, can be set to ring different lines per schedule, play custom recordings to different callers, and can even be used on websites to call both parties and connect the call, like below. But, the call connect won't work from the forum cause the myBB script won't allow the connection, so its just an example. You can get an idea of how it works though.

Too cool!

Here's a link to request an invite if any of you guys are interested: This might be cool for your husband's business Tisha.

http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

It's been out for a while now and its a really handy feature. Its like having your own personal secretary but you get to set the options.

Google voice use to allow you to make calls from your cell phone without using any of your minutes. Not sure how long after, but it was soon stopped because of complaints from mobile phone carriers as you can imagine.

It allows you to group people in categories and depending on which category they are in, it will ring certain lines that you have attached to your Google line.
So you give out your google number, say (888) 111-2222. You place your boss and co-workers under work category and whenever someone in that category calls, you can allow it to only ring to your home phone. For family, you may choose to allow everyone under family to ring to your cell, work and home phone. Unknown/blocked/private callers can be sent directly to voicemail, etc. Pretty cool feature. Unfortunately for me, I only have one line, so I can't really use this service efficiently.

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Here's a portion of the e-mail from the google voice invite:

If you haven't already heard about it, Google Voice is a service that makes using your current phones much better!

Here's what it offers:
A personal phone number that rings all of your existing phones when people call
All of your voicemail in one inbox with unlimited online storage and free voicemail transcripts sent to your phone and email
Low-priced international calling to over 200 countries and free SMS
Other powerful features like the first phone spam filter to protect you from unwanted callers, the ability to ListenInTM on your voicemail messages while they are being left, conference calling and more

Yeah, I\'ve had an account for a while, but don\'t use it. Friends and family know when to call my home or cellie, and work people call my work number.

I could see this being great for people who make a living networking. It's almost like an 800 number. You don't have to worry about giving it out since it can't really be abused. I don't personally use it much for the same reason as Zeph, but I would be interested if I had multiple lines.

I use the Call Me button my my site for web design. The eaiser you make it for potential clients to contact you, the more likely they will.