What’s the story on google voicemail?
It is really pretty cool. Instead of having voicemail only on your phone, you have it in a gmail type interface online. They attempt to transcribe your voicemails (usually failing miserably) and of course you can play them back or delete them.
Using a smart phone all of this can be accessed from your phone’s browser. If you have a blackberry or android phone they have an app for google voice that you can make calls from.
If you have multiple phones, you can get a google voice number that rings all of them. So now you can give everyone one number if you wish.
You can also make international calls at a deeply discounted rate. My dad works in Nigeria it is around 60 cents a minute to call him through all the major carriers. It is 14 cents on google voice.