It's funny how some folks assume you'll always answer your cell phone even if you're at home (my cell is usually in another room being charged), and some assume you'll always hear and respond to a voice-mail right away. Services that allow you to be reached regardless of whether you're near your home, work, or mobile phones are becoming cheap enough for "regular" folks to consider. I'm not currently using either of these, but I think Google Voice might be just what I need.
Services That Eliminate Telephone Tag - BusinessWeek:
"The primary appeal of Google Voice, which is still in a testing phase, is that all of your phone lines—up to six in total—are consolidated into a single phone number. This may not be ideal if your spouse or kids use your home phone, because the call is routed to whichever line answers first. But on the Google Voice Web site you can set rules that allow the home phone to ring only if no other location picks up. I chose to have calls ring through to my cell, home, and office phones at once, and I sometimes adjust the rules to ring phones I use temporarily while traveling.
Few important calls ever fall through the cracks, and when they do, Google Voice provides ingenious voice mail options. All messages go to a single Web-based account, eliminating the need to juggle different greetings and PIN numbers. Messages are stored as audio files, which you can grab off the Web from any computer and forward in e-mails or download as MP3 files. Messages can also be transcribed as text (with mixed results) and sent to you as e-mail. You can then delete the voice mails without listening if you want."
