So you may have seen a few of my twitter posts on the new Google Voice service. A couple of weeks after my request, I received my invitation to set up my Google Voice number. After playing with it for an hour, I saw that it could have a number of benefits for journalists and other communicators:

• It doesn’t cost anything to use the service or place calls within the U.S.
• It’s easy to use.
• It allows you to set up a central number that will ring any or all of your various phones–work, mobile, home. Great for roaming journalists waiting on a call back from a source.
• Pressing “4” on your phone during a call will start recording a call after notifying both parties. The call recordings are sent to your in-box for playback or download. I tested it and it works well.
• For those of us who conduct interviews by phone with international sources who don’t use a free service such as Skype, check out a selection of these cheap per-minute rates to other countries (prices in U.S. dollars.)
  • Canada $0.01
  • China $0.02
  • Germany $0.02
  • India $0.07
  • Russia, St. Petersburg $0.03
  • South Africa $0.06

There’s probably a number of other advantages you could find as you get more into it. There are a number of companies that offer these types of services, but I haven’t seen one that offers so many, in one place, in an easy-to-use format, that’s also free of charge (with the exception of international calls.) It’s worth checking out.