what makes google voice special?

There are many benefits to using google voice as an a personal digital operator.   First and foremost, screening calls. Your personal operator is going to ask everyone with a restricted number to state their name. If you want, this can happen to anyone that calls who isn’t one of your Google Contacts.

Your personal operator can also serve certain people to specific phones and present custom voicemail greetings. These voicemails will be transcribed and sent to your phone as a text message and emailed to you.

The history of your phone calls and voicemails will be archived at http://google.com/voice. Having GvoiceMail is handy. This personal operator is so good at handling calls that you can switch the phone you are using in the middle of a call.  Say you walk home while on a business call: tell the person on the other end to hold, then you press press * and hang up, your home phone rings and you answer it. Sounds too good to be true.

Want in?  One doesn’t ask for an invite to google voice, he signs up.   I should also mention that this service is free and Google provides you with a free number.