Call me at my office for our Wednesday meeting, but wait . . . I'll be on my way to pick up Brandon from soccer practice. Could you call me on my cell instead? Or better yet, can you call me on my office number first and, if I don't answer, then call my cell?

If you had a single number you could give your friends and colleagues and let that number find you where you are, wouldn't that make life easier? Now what if that one number was free? And what if that one number took voice mails and transcribed them for you in an e-mail or a text? And what if you got some other goodies on top of that?

Welcome to the new Google Voice, formerly known as Grand Central. It aspires to become the central station not just for voice but for many channels of communication. Grand Central was an independent company that Google purchased in 2007. The Google Voice service, announced in early March, presently is only available to folks with Grand Central accounts, but soon it will be available to all.

How do you get Google Voice? If you are a current Grand Central account holder, go to grandcentral.com, log on to your account, and upgrade to Google Voice. Otherwise, you can ask for an invitation request to join the service. Because I was one of the early Grand Central account holders, I was able to upgrade to Google Voice and can tell you how this service may help your business.

A single public number shields your private numbers: When I signed up for Grand Central about two years ago, I loved the idea of having a single number to give to friends and colleagues. That number would ring all of my phones (or only one, depending on whom the caller was), and I could be reached easily. If I moved or changed my cell or home number, I wouldn't have to inform anyone because my Grand Central number wouldn't change. All I had to do was to change the settings on my Grand Central account to point to the new numbers. That was all good. The problem was that when people called my Grand Central number, they would hear that this was a free service from Grand Central. I didn't want my callers to hear that, especially if I was using it for a business call. The current Google Voice does not have this feature. Callers to your Google Voice number can't tell who offers the service, which is the way it should be. This could change in the future, but for now, Google Voice is free of ads.

Voice mails transcribed and e-mailed: If you're like me, you may not want to take the time to call your voice mail number and listen to long, drawn-out voice mails. Looking at an e-mail or text message is more convenient. Google Voice can be set up to transcribe your voice mails and either e-mail or text them to you automatically. The transcription is not perfect, especially if it includes an unusual name. But the e-mail or text also includes a link to the audio file, so you can play back the audio if you prefer.

Set up calls to any phone from any phone: Imagine you're at a friend's house and you have to make an urgent client call, but your cell phone battery is dead. You can go online and set up calls to your clients using your friend's phone, and the clients will see your Google Voice number on their caller ID. Plus, your friend won't be charged for the call. You can also text message any number from the web for free. Text messages sent to your Google Voice number will be sent to any of your forwarding cell phones and be stored in your inbox.

Other useful features: Google Voice keeps track of all your voice mails in an inbox, so you can get to them in the order you like as opposed to the order in which they arrive. You can record your phone conversations, and that will also be tracked in your inbox. Making conference calls is also easy, and you can call international numbers at low rates.

Gotchas: So where are the gotchas? I can think of three:

1. Privacy. According to the Google Voice Privacy Policy: "When you use Google Voice, Google's servers automatically record certain information about your use of Google Voice. Similar to other web services, Google Voice records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP address, date and time of access, cookie ID and referrer URL). Google's servers also automatically collect telephony log information (including calling party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls)."
    
2. Ads. At this point, there are no ads and life is good. Google will probably add some advertising to this service to make it profitable, which will be annoying at best and distracting at worst.
    
3. Fees. At this point, Google Voice is free, so the decision to sign up and use the service is relatively simple. But what happens if Google decides to charge for it later? At that point, you'll have given out your Google Voice number to all your friends and colleagues. So you may be forced to pay for the service, put up with annoying ads, or experience the hassle of informing your friends that your phone number has changed.

Google Voice's state-of-the-art voice and text message service can be useful to an entrepreneur. The best part is that these services are free at this point. Proceed with caution, though, being mindful of potential privacy issues, ads and fees in the future.