There are times where you might want to hide my phone number from people - to keep telemarketers from calling, to manage a business relationship, or to keep annoying calls at bay. Gone are the days when you could just have your number unlisted - it's almost impossible to do any sort of business online without the need to supply your phone number!



Enter the phone routing system. It allows you to "hide" behind a virtual number - one that isn't actually tied to a physical phone - and gives you the flexibility to route than number in any way you see fit. Receive calls from your mom, but not that cheapskate relative that's always borrowing money from you. Have your cell phone ring during the day, and your home phone in the evening. All of this and more is possible in a phone routing system.

Right now, the easiest routing system to use is GrandCentral.com... and it's free!

First, GrandCentral.com was recently purchased by Google, and is currently in Beta. At one time, GC users could send invitations out to their friends, but GC recently removed that functionality. There's no word as to when that will return, if ever. For now, there is a waiting list at GrandCentral for you to sign up on. I recommend you do that right away.

Once you've been accepted at GC, it's time to setup your phones. Just enter your phones, one at a time, into the simply UI. Identify the type of each phone (cell, home, work, even Gizmo)!

Once you've setup your phones, it's time to setup your contacts and sort them into groups. GC can import your contacts from Gmail (of course), and from an export file in CSV format. You can also enter them manually, and GC will also add the info from your GC calls into your address book. Simply select each contact, and indicate whether they are friends, family, work, or others.

Now open up your settings, and under each phone, indicate whether it can be reached by each of the contact groups. If you don't select a group, that contact's call will go directly to voicemail. You can also open a contact's record, and specify what phone numbers that contact can reach - this overrides the group's list. So for example, if you family can only reach your home phone number, but you want your mom to be able to reach your cell phone tool - just go into your mom's contact record and select your cell phone! Pretty slick, huh?

Finally - give this new number out to EVERYBODY as your phone number. Tell them to forget about the other numbers (if they ever knew them), and just call you here. You can always be reached from this number. And of course, feel free to give this number out to total strangers - knowing that you can block their calls at any time, while ensuring that people you WANT to talk to can always reach you!