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I lost my cell number a few weeks ago (long story) and have been wondering what number to tell people to call me on. Number portability is nice, but not always the perfect solution, and I’ve been wanting to give people a number that won’t change in six months. Problem solved.  I received an invite to Google’s new exclusive Grand Central service this afternoon, and now I have invitations to pass along to the first three people to comment on this post.

Grand Central is to phone service and voicemail what Gmail is to email. Grand Central allows you to choose a “number for life” in any area code and then connect that number to all your actual phone lines. So, I can set the order in which a caller should be connected to my various phones (cell, followed by home, etc.) and even send different callers to different phones. Mom calling? Send her to my home phone. Boss calling? Send him direct to voicemail. And manage a single voicemail box for all these phones instead of multiple voicemail and answering machines.

Plus, there are a slew of amazing features; take for example ListenIn that allow you to listen as callers record voicemail. If you decide the call is worth taking you can break in and begin a conversation at any time. If you want an invite, be among the first three people to comment to this post.