Google Voice

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google Voice is about to enter public beta. Google voice is a phone management service which provides a single “front-end” phone number for all of your phones. You can register your cellular phone, your skype phone number, your residential line etc all with google voice and when someone calls you at your google voice number, the call will be forwarded to any phones you choose. One of the nicest features is that it will likely mean you will only have to switch phone numbers one more time in your life as you can always attach a new phone to your voice account that is reachable through your google voice number.

The service was known as Grand Central before google got involved, and is currently open only to previous Grand Central users, but is soon to be opened to the public. There are several interesting features to google voice including voicemail with transcripts you can read via email, on the fly phone switching during a call, and the ability to set certain phones to ring when certain people call.

It’s still a US-only service, but here’s hoping it opens up in Canada.