Google is offering a new service called Google Voice. The basic idea is to give a person one phone number for all your phones. Jim Hamm writes, "I just received an invite, after submitting my name some time ago just to see what it was all about. With the same set of emails I received the following article by Paul Stamatiou on his first impressions of this service. Other links in his article contain more info. See http://paulstamatiou.com

"My first impression is that this is an intriguing idea, and a service that might be very useful to a business person who needs to stay in touch, or for someone who travels a lot. Also, it seems that a person can text message free using this service, whereas text messaging on a commercial carrier costs money.

"AT&T, Verizon, et. al., probably aren't too enthused by what Google is doing. I don't plan to jump on this service yet, if ever, because I'm not sure I really need it, and it seems a bit convoluted. But, having said that, when we're traveling in our motorhome it would be handy to have calls to our home phone number routed right to our cell phone.

"Google is apparently working on getting number portability, so one can just use their existing number and not have to get a new one from Google." Here's the Google site http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

Now, John Carter enters, "My impression is this: anyone can take the time, if they will, to forward their phones to any other number when they go on vacation. For busy business people with multiple phones, it might be appropriate to have one 'master' phone ring if any of the others ring, but to have ALL of them ring at once for ANY incoming call to ANY phone is a bit ridiculous. Still, I'm sure some Type A person will think that's a blessing."