Courtesy of Zeid, I finally got an invite to use Google Voice. I’ll write more about this when I figure more about it, but at a minimum, it gives you a real phone number (amazingly, for free) which anyone can call and leave voice mail. You can configure it to ring a different phone (say, your cell phone) or send it directly to voicemail. You can access your voice mail in the conventional way, or by using a computer online. It even automatically transcribes the message into text! Very cool, and thanks Zeid for hooking me up.

Here’s an example of what you can do. This is a little flash widget. If you click on it, you can type your own name and a number that you can be reached at. Google will then call you back and hook me to my voicemail (or, if I configured it differently, ring my cell). Give it a try if you like. I’m just starting this, and it seems that you can’t select the “Conceal my number” checkbox if you want this to work. It also won’t work from international numbers.

Addendum: Here is an example of what Google Voice can do with a voicemail message.