Will Google Voice change the way you work?

Getty ImagesDoes it drive you nuts to have to check voicemail on more than one phone?

Have you ever started a call on a land line and then wanted to transfer the call to your cell phone so that you can finish from outside?

Ever call someone, leave a message with your office number, then leave your office and realize that forgot to give your cell number?

Would you like to be able to send text messages from your computer rather than from your cell phone?

Ever wish you could listen in on while someone was leaving a voicemail and then decide to pick up (like those old answering machines allowed) -- or that you could read your voicemail as an email or text message rather than having to call into a system (like iPhone's visual voicemail)?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you'll probably want to try Google Voice, a new service that has "future of telephone" written all over it. It's not a phone service provider, so you'll still need your contract with whatever company provides your service. Rather it's a new phone number that can coordinate your different phones and allow you to do a slew of things easily and efficiently. I've been playing around with it for a few days to see whether it's something that will help or complicate life at work. (I'm not the only one on Shine playing around. Daily Grommet just did a post explaining how it works and how to get on the waiting list for a number.)

So what does Google Voice mean for your career?

1. You can have a number that travels with you when you switch jobs. As long as you train yourself to give out your Google Voice number rather than a work or cell number, it will be much easier for people to find you when you move on.

2. When you're out of the country, you can easily check your messages online without the need to dial in to any voicemail systems.

3. If you get one of these numbers, you'll need to notify all your contacts of your new number, which you can do through an outgoing voicemail on your current voicemail systems, through an email blast, or on a one-off basis. But until you get everyone calling you on the new number, you won't really be able to use much of what's appealing about Google Voice.

4. To take full advantage of Google Voice, you'll want to plug in all your phone numbers into Google's contact list. This is another start-up job for most people, who probably store their phone numbers in Outlook, a cell phone, or in other places. It's yet another way for Google to make sure you spend a little more time tethered to its offerings.

5. Speaking of being tethered to Google, you can get free conference calling without having to use another service, Skype-like international calling, and an easy way to record calls. Basically, lots of stuff you're probably already doing with other service providers. So if you're using Google Voice, you're probably going to be using a lot of other things on Google.

6. You can get Google Voice to accomplish many things, but it requires some planning and an investment in time playing around with the settings. You'll need to make some decisions on how available you want to be. Do you want your professional contacts to ring your home phone or your cell phone? Do you want your calls screened or to go through without announcing who the caller is? Did you remember to turn it off when you leave the country so that US calls are not ringing through to your cell phone in another country?

I found it fairly easy to get started and get hooked, but several people I've talked to thought it sounded like too much work. Does this sound appealing to you? And for anyone who has already tried it, what do you think?