Google Voice offers a phone number for you, not your phone.

LITTLE ROCK — Google Voice may be old hat to thousands, but many more thousands have yet to be delighted by this free service that has been in public Beta testing since March and still requires an invite to use.

The invites are easy to get. Just go to www.google.com/voice and request an invite; you should receive one by e-mail in a day or so.

Why would you want an invite? Back in the spring, when Google finally relaunched GrandCentral, many paid hundreds for a chance to immediately use the service that is currently free to users.

What's the big deal?

GrandCentral, which Google bought in 2007, allows you to choose a local number that will simultaneously ring up to six phones, including your cell, office, home and whatever else you may have. Google Voice boasts some impressive features that should make users wonder how long this will be free. A few of my favorites:

1. Voice mail transcripts: read your voice mail via e-mail or as an SMS text on your cell

2. Vary greetings by caller

3. Check your voice mail (listen and/or read it) from the Web, by e-mail or by text

4. Send, receive and store SMS

5. Phone routing: choose which phones ring based on who calls

6. Call record: record calls and store them online

7. Manage groups - set rules for how a call performs by group

A number for you, not your phone

The number you get is your number, rather than it performing as a number tied to a phone. This is your number regardless of whether you switch jobs or phone carriers. I love the simplicity of giving folks one number to reach me. Period. Of course, to use effectively, there is the daunting task of reprinting business cards and actually giving my new Google number to all my contacts, but I'm starting to think it will be worth the effort.

Voice mail you can see

One of my pet peeves is listening to voice mail. It is a source of aggravation that has been known to render me quite negligent in this duty. As if God himself were trying to make me a better person, at least a few of my prayers have been answered with the voice mail capabilities of Google Voice.

Take this example:

I am sitting in my office in a meeting with a co-worker. My cell rings, and I can see that the hubby is calling. Unless it's an emergency, I never take phone calls while in a meeting. But then I start worrying — it's in the middle of the day, why would the husband call? Maybe he needs me to pick up the boys. Maybe one of them is hurt. Maybe I just need to pick up milk. But who knows?

A few seconds later, a text appears on my phone. It is the transcription of the voice mail from the call. Husband just wanted to say hi, hoped my day was good and he loved me. Awww. Now, I could mentally get back to the meeting.

All that took about 20 seconds and all I did was sit, nod at co-worker, glance down and then nod at co-worker some more.

Granted, the transcription is rarely perfect. Apparently the system gets confused by the tangled slurs of the children and the Southern drawl of the spouse. When the messages don't appear quite right in text, one click from the online message center allows you to play the message, and forward through as needed.

More cool stuff

Consider a few of the other life-altering capabilities.

International calls are much cheaper than what you pay through any carriers. At just about 2 cents a minute, you save quite a bit compared to the $1.49 that Verizon and AT&T charge without a calling plan. Conference calls (up to four people) are free. Google Voice users can also make calls from their computer.

Another cool feature is the recording option.

Imagine you're walking, driving or otherwise mobile as you’re talking to your friend. She gives you an important number, but you're without pen or paper. Instead, you just hit “4” to start recording the call and then “4” again to stop recording. An automated voice tells both users when the recording has started and stopped, so don't think you can do this on the sly.

I would have loved to access the Google Voice site a little more easily from my iPhone, but for now Google Voice is only available as a mobile app on the Blackberry and Android phones. Google and Apple are still hashing out the details of their arrangement, or lack thereof, but that's another column, another day.

What I’d change

Knowing that the service is still in Beta testing, and that it's completely free, I am easy on the nitpicking, but there are a couple of issues I hope Google addresses. They need to figure out a way that users can import existing contacts and numbers from their cell. While I was able to import contacts from my Address Book from my Mac, all of my contacts were dubbed “Unnamed Contacts.” The information is all there inside the listing, but it takes a manual renaming to get the listing usable.

My even pickier wish is that Google would make recording my personal message easier. Just as I hate listening to voice mails, I hate recording a message for others to hear. As I tried to cater each of my messages — one for the family and another for co-workers — this became more bothersome. I would love to have a pretty voice simply read my typed message to my callers. But now I'm just looking that gift horse right in the mouth.