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The invite to Google Voice that laid waiting in my inbox this morning really felt like getting the golden ticket from Willy Wonka. The slow-releasing invites appear to be causing quite a bit of buzz (eBay has a number of them for sale ranging from about $50-$150).

I knew this product would be cool – but I didn’t realize how it would completely change how I manage phone calls at the office… within the first 30 minutes of using it.

Here’s the run-down of how it did that…

• Setup Google Voice phone number (even got a vanity number!)
• Forwarded it to my cell phone number
• Recorded three voicemail messages (friends, work and default)
• Setup a few contacts who are likely to call on the new Google number and assigned them a voicemail message
• Forwarded my office phone to my new Google #

That’s it (so far). Here’s what its done to improve things for me:

• ALL office calls (ones I want; many I don’t) appear on my cell (w/o having to give out my cell #)
• If I ignore the call – it goes to Google voicemail w/ the “work” message (since its forwarded from my office phone, the source phone # is always my extension)
• Google voice saves the message, transcribes it into my inbox as text (and is surprisingly accurate) AND sends me a text message with the first several words of the message that was left.
• I now know exactly who called, when, and can SEE what they were talking about without having to listen through the entire message.
• All “um’s” and “uh’s” are removed from the text transcription
• I can listen, forward, save or delete the messages via my Google website (including some of that functionality on my iPhone)

And I haven’t even getting to a whole list of other cool stuff it does. For example, I can click on a contact’s name/number and press “Call.” Google will call my cell phone and as I pick up a voice tells me to wait a moment while it places the call; it then dials the number of the person I’m calling and the call is routed — for free (in the U.S.).

An amazing tool. I’m already feeling like I don’t know what I’d do without it and anxious to see what else I can do with it. Stay tuned…

Tags: awesomeness, cell phones, google voice, phones