You want free text messaging? Free visual voice mail? The ability to screen your calls and have custom voice mail greetings?

Then you really need to check out Google Voice. It is now completely wide open (and free) to sign up for anybody in the U.S.

I’ve had a Google Voice number for awhile. In fact, my main business line is now a Google Voice line. But, it was a voice-mail only line up until I got an Android phone. The Android OS keeps you inside the Google-verse which means that everything integrates with Google.

Using an Android phone, you can download the Google Voice app from the Marketplace (free). When you set it up, you’ll be able to do things like:

• Make out-going calls from your Google Voice line from your Android phone.
• Send/receive text messages using Voice and not have to pay for SMS from your carrier.
• Get visual voice mail via the Voice app, a feature that some carriers actually charge an additional monthly fee for.

Now, I’m not going to go through a whole tutorial on how to set up Voice on your phone. It is actually brain-dead easy. However, here are a few tips I picked up while setting it up:

1. Set up your mobile number in Google Voice via the web rather than from the phone. Otherwise, it will require you to get a text message on the phone to confirm. And, if you intend to use Voice for SMS, you don’t want to have to add SMS to your carrier (and pay for it) just for confirming your phone with Google. If you set it up via the web, then you can take care of it via a phone call.
2. My personal preference is to turn call screening OFF. It forces people to say their name before it rings your phone, which is annoying.
3. Set up Voice in the settings (on the web) to NOT forward SMS messages to your phone. It might seem counter-inuitive, but you will actually get all your SMS messages via the Voice app. If you set it to forward SMS, then it is actually forwarding to your actual carrier number and therefore charging you for text messages. And that defeats the point.
4. Put a shortcut to the Voice app on your phone’s home screen and remove the shortcut to the phone’s built-in messaging. You want to get into a habit of using Voice for these things. If you accidentally send an SMS from the phone’s built-in app, it will use your carrier rather than Voice.
5. Be sure to set up your contacts with Google Contacts and assign them to appropriate groups. It is by using the groups that you can define custom rules for their incoming calls. For example, are you getting pesky calls from a particular number that you don’t want? Well, with Voice, you can easily block that number. Or, by assigning it to a group, you can set that group to always forward to voice mail and never ring your actual phone. Very handy.

This was my primary reason for switching away from the Iphone and getting an Android phone. I don’t even give out my direct Verizon number. Everybody gets the Google Voice number and, from their point of view (and mine), I can manage those calls just like it was my main number. With the Voice app on the Android, it literally integrates this system into the phone so deeply that it doesn’t feel as if you’re not using your carrier directly.

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