Hi Adria - In hopes of getting Google Voice...

Okay, so I have been expanding my business over the last few months and have been working on creating a better income stream with less work for staging homes for sale. I have decided to launch a new branch of Sorted Affairs Home Staging and create "Virtual Staging". This would entail clients who cannot afford to have me fully stage their homes (and maybe even organizing) send photos and then we can spend time on the phone discussing the ways that they can stage themselves.

I am really excited about this because it means I can stage a home in Los Angeles or Omaha, or even in London. Having better access by phone would be incredibly important to create this amazing new opportunity - and it would be a whole lotta fun! Hey, if you mpove to San Francisco I can help you set up your new home to be efficient from the start.

I am an itinerant feminist organizer, meaning I travel across the country and help young women organize for gender justice on their campuses and in their communities. I also speak on the next generation of the feminist revolution, which is the subject of the book I'm writing. (Now you can see why I adore your blog!)

I travel about 20 days every month and run my life from my phone and laptop. I'm somehow good at collecting phone numbers - I have a cell phone, a home phone, and a "business" number that seemed like a good idea at the time. So, I would use Google Voice to combine these numbers and cease the very annoying ritual of checking three different voice mailboxes.

But where Google Voice would be most helpful is in transcribing and maintaining digital voice mails. I get lots of them from all my numbers and it's not uncommon to accidentally delete an important message or, more likely, to forget a voice mail because I listened to it en route to a plane, in a cab, etc, without putting the details into my calendar or on my to-do list. It would also allow me to easily forward voice mails left by people/reporters trying to reach one of my mentors to her office instead of having to take down the info or, worse, deal with the people calling!

I'm not saying a Google Voice invite will help keep the feminist revolution going - you're already doing your part with this blog! - but it would help keep this feminist sane and productive. Thanks for the contest!

I would love the opportunity to utilize technology to my benefit, such as Google Voice, in order to be accessible for my current clients and prospective future clients as I grow and nurture my first interior design business. I have started slowly, but I have already enlisted the help of Twitter, Facebook, my own website, and Google Apps for my business, so I can work from virtually anywhere I carry my BlackBerry. I am a current college student earning my BS in Interior Design, and my goal is to be self-sufficient by the time I graduate. I then want to examine my choices from there. Thank you for the chance at winning the holiday giveaway! :-)

I'm an ICU nurse - I'm constantly getting calls from research companies, medical staffing headhunters, etc. Unfortunately, due to my budget, I'm limited in the number of minutes on my cell phone and I also am unable to take personal calls during the long hours I'm at work (6:30am to 11:00pm several days a week). A google voice number and voicemail would be so helpful for me to save money, screen personal calls and get back in contact with those that are important to me.

Help, help, my superhero identity is taking over my life!

Okay, my only superpowers are snark and sarcasm, but I use them liberally when disguised by my "secret" identity. Okay, you got me again. My identity is not really a secret since I use it on my blog, on Twitter, at techie conferences and anywhere else that I care to express my unbiased opinion. However, much like Clark Kent toiling away at The Daily Planet, me and my "real name" get recognized by a precious few. If I Google myself, I'm (happily) nowhere to be found; right now the "government" name is for taxes and the resume I still need in order to find a 9-to-5 hustle to support my internet writing habit. But mypolaropposite - my superhero doppelganger - is EVERYWHERE. Go ahead, open a search engine, I dare ya...

Fortunately for my SELVES, I've got two Twitter accounts, a few e-mail addresses, and a bunch of custom URLs. Darn that superhero, she's all over all of them while my mild-mannered "professional" persona monopolizes my Facebook account, my LinkedIn profile, and my telephone number. These accounts remain the last vestiges of contact solely for my college roommates, executive recruiters, and people who knew me before the Internets took over my life.

Since my superhero ego has lots of other cool tech tools at her disposal, doesn't she deserve her own voicemail? Tell her to say goodbye to AT&T and hello to her own voice service. And since she's using her obsession with WordPress themes and SEO to convince others to blog, shouldn't her voicemail be at Google with the rest of the techies? Sure it means getting new business cards, but they'll go well with her new blog theme and avatar.

Please save the "real" me from my current practice of giving everyone my cell number and relentlessly screening calls. One of these days I'm gonna miss a call from the Publishers Clearinghouse and it won't be pretty...

I've been looking for a job for too long now and have had to take temp work to make ends meet. Most of my temp jobs won't let me talk on my cell phone so I've often missed potential employers calling and they're not around when I try to call back after my day ends. I am allowed to read email or texts I receive though so this way I'd know if a potential employer was calling and be able to see what they said. It would give me a better opportunity to find a full time job so I don't have to keep doing temp!

So I saw this holiday give-away thing over on Twitter and happened to find your blog. I see I'm supposed to write something here about how Google Voice will improve my business or career - it won't!

I am highly creative, yet very disorganized, mind-maps, mental-noise-reduction-routines, honest-to-goodness friends who keep me outside of myself, are the only things that keep me functional!

I am a geek by definition, but unemployable by most American standards, as the moment I find something shiny or have a question about how or why something works, or if something can be done, I go into my bat-cave and do not emerge until I have either solved the question, or passed out from exhaustion.

Now, this would be a great skill, if it could be utilized towards something useful, like saving the universe, or keeping comcast from disconnecting, but, no, I'm not quite that focused, so one week it is an android application, the next a grand-mothered replicating backup network, the next adding sound and OpenCV object recognition to a motion detector, the next fixing a counter-top dishwasher to run from my bathroom, the next, representing myself in a lawsuit, and the next, building household furniture.

Yeah...not very employable... but, y'see? Google Voice would be very cool. It would get me another number, one that would remain fairly consistent, one that would contact me based on my heuristics, one that would let me see voice messages, let certain people through, block others, send nice messages, like "sorry, i'm on a project" to close friends, or "bother me if you have to" to family members, and "i'm sorry, i'm not ok to take calls" from "my computer is broke people" and, maybe, possible "we're sorry, this phone number is no longer in use" to ex-employers =) .

Hopefully that is reason enough for someone to give me a Google Voice account? I can trade with Wave invites, but for now, I think I need to go create my new website,

Sam

Due to a studio move of our startup, I'd use it to consolidate several business lines onto a cellular number (I think). If that didn't work, I'd probably set it up as a national hotline number for Tiger's mistresses and route calls accordingly.