I am a big fan of GrandCentral.com and today the prospects for using the service just got a lot better. GrandCentral provides a unified number that can be used to consolidate all your phone numbers. For example, so you have a home office and cell phone and your cell phone doesn’t get coverage in the home office. With GrandCentral, you can have both numbers ring at the same time or specify specific rules for when the numbers ring. You can also create web applets to allow people to call you without giving them your phone number (they fill in their phone number in a web form and GrandCentral calls them and you at the same time) and they even have a mobile application that allows you to call a contact where GrandCentral calls your cell phone, then connects you with the contact (great if you have free incoming minutes). This is a great service for those that might migrate a number (buy and iPhone and get a new cell number, just program it in GrandCentral), have multiple numbers, or are just looking for a good feature rich way to integrate voice communications.
Based on the quality of features and service I was ready to put my GrandCentral number on my business cards, but I had one concern….they were an unknown startup and I couldn’t ensure their viability over the long term. I also had some concern about their price model as it really wasn’t clearly articulated. The Google acquisition certainly solves the first problem and likely solves the second one as well. It also reinforces the potential for a Google cell phone as I can imagine a carrier service based on GrandCentral’s rich feature set that also includes custom ringtones, call lists, solicitor blocking, etc. If you haven’t checked out GrandCentral it is worth your time to give it a spin and it won’t cost you a dime.
For the record, I have no financial stake in GrandCentral. I’m just an advocate of their service because it works on so many levels.