I got an email from Google today informing me that I’ve been invited to join the closed beta of Google Voice. After the shock of being asked to be first on something, I quickly realized that this is pretty much what people have been promising us the internet would do for us for years – one phone number for life. Much like I now use GMail to act as a front end for my dezendorf.com account (and will regardless who is hosting the domain), I now have a service that will act as a similar front end for all the phones in my life.

Right now, I’ve got the Vonage line hooked into Google Voice, along with my iPhone. When someone calls the GV, all the phones associated with the number ring. Even better, it gives me the flexibility to select which phone rings based on what time it is. At the moment, the Vonage line will only ring between 5:00 PM and 8:00 AM on weekdays, and ²⁴⁄₇ on the weekends. That’s likely to change once I use this a little more regularly. Tomorrow, when I get to work, the first thing I’m going to do is hook the system up to my office line – and set it to ring from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday-Friday.

All of this, and I’m just brushing the surface. Apparently you can set custom greetings for caller groups – so your friends get the funny message, your coworkers get the business like message, and anyone you don’t know gets the no-information “leave a message” message. You also get to pick the number you are going to use – out of the range Google has purchased in your area code – and I seem to be early, so I got an easy number.

No, I’m not going to post it here. I’ll start sending it out soon as my default number, once I’m a little more comfortable with how it all works.