This week has been an exciting one…first my awesome friend Lena hooked me up with an invite to Google Wave, which I’m still waiting for THAT email to come in, and second — I finally received my invite to join Google Voice! Apparently these invites are coming through first come first served since your not able to send out any invites yourself, I’m sure the reasoning behind that is that they only have a limited number of phone numbers available (at this time). So, until my Google Wave invite one comes in…it’s time to play with this one!

After getting home about 2:30 am this morning I decided to jump onto Google Voice and see what it has to offer.  I think the longest part of the setup was trying to figure out what new phone number I wanted to use (you can change this later for $10).  Here is a little description of some of the features: Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your voicemail to text.  I think one of my favorite feature is the transcribing your voicemails and then having them sent to your email (or SMS).  I honestly cannot stand listening to a voicemail all the way through in fear that they might have left an important message right at the end…now I can just scan the email to get the gyst of it.

Another great feature is the widget (shown at the top and right sidebar of the blog) which allows users to click on it, add their name and number to contact me.  Google Voice will call the number that the user provided and then contact me.  This allows me to keep my phone number private and also gives the user the option to keep their phone number private.  I think this would be great for those running their own business online and don’t have a toll-free number to give out. The one downside to this option is if someone decides to prank you while keeping their number private…doesn’t seem like you can “block” or mark as spam at this time (hope they figure this one out).

I still need to setup my groups.  Groups allow you to setup different call settings like custom greetings and what numbers to ring you at…or just send that entire group to voicemail!

There are lots of other features I have yet to discover.  You can check out the Google Voice Blog to read up on them all and don’t forget to request your invite from Google Voice. Until then…I’ll just have to start passing out my new number!!