I checked up on it again once back in the motherland, and Google had since bought it, and it was invite-only. Armed with my invite, I signed up today, and am going to be using my new for-the-rest-of-my-life phone number. It’s exciting.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s a system where you can get a number local to you, and then when people call that number, all your phones ring – your cell phone, your home phone, your work extension, whichever. Of course this is configurable, and it’s even configurable by groups of contacts, so that when your mother in law calls, only your house phone will ring, but if it’s your adrenaline-junky emergency-room-frequenting brother, it will ring all your phones. Answer any phone.

It can screen unknown callers, and give each of your groups a different voicemail greeting. And speaking of voicemails, they are now all centralized, and organized like an e-mail inbox. No more checking your cell phone voicemail, and then your home, and then your Gizmo account’s. There’s even a feature to listen in to the voicemail message before you pick up, and you can start/stop recording phone calls simply by pressing ’4.’

What excited me most about this prospect is that it removes the tie between the implementation of your phone system (service providers, frequently changing cell phones / cell phone numbers) from how your friends and family interact with you. Until the day I die, I could conceivably keep this same number.

Check it out – http://grandcentral.com