One thing that constantly amazes me is how many of my clients prefer to communicate with me via text message. It may be because I am a bit difficult to understand over the phone but my cell phone has been dinging like crazy lately. So, I decided to go back to Google Voice as my work phone number so I can answer my text messages straight from my Google Apps inbox.
For those of you who don't know, Google Voice is a service from Google that will let you register for a free local number and set it up so that when someone calls your Google number, it will ring all of your phones at once. For example, I carry both my iPhone 4 and a Blackberry (the Blackberry is used more or less like a pager, if a server goes down, it notifies me on my Blackberry), I have it setup that when somebody calls or texts my Google number, it rings both my iPhone and Blackberry.
However, last month Google added a new feature that when a person calls while I am in my Gmail account, I can answer the call straight from my web browser! Google Voice is completely free to sign up and use for U.S. calls as well as free unlimited text messaging!