So what are the benefits of this? Well I’ll go through the full feature list. But my favorite part is that I get a second phone number for free. It’s easy to keep myself updated with a second phone number I can use for business purposes with it’s voicemail and ability to call from it. Of course that’s not nearly all that’s useful from this service. The second best part? There’s already a Blackberry application for it. Yes I’m able to rock Google Voice with a Blackberry application which was from Google itself.

One number for all your calls and SMS
* Call screening – Announce and screen callers
* Listen in – Listen before taking a call
* Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
* SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
* Place calls – Call free within the continental US and to Canada
* Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
* Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
* Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts
* Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
* Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
* Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
* Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
* Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails

More cool things you can do with Google Voice
* Conference calling – Join people into a single call
* Call record – Record calls and store them online
* Call switch – Switch phones during a call
* Mobile apps – Try our apps for Blackberry and Android phones
* Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
* GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
* Manage groups – Set preferences by group

When I setup the account I had no idea I had all of these options available. I blindly clicked free invite with a “ohhh new toy” mentality in mind. Now though? I am quite happy with what I’ve signed up for!

Still want more details and sick of me typing? Watch the video!

This Week’s Top 5 Blog Posts

Why ending in 09/0*3*? Because I haven’t read anything today yet with how busy work has been. More importantly though, what’s this? A post on Stuart Conover’s homepage? The blog that refuses to die even with month long interruptions due to working on other things? Amazing I know! Today I return (briefly) to go over 5 articles I read this week that really hit it home for me. These articles either resonated with me, were good reads, had useful information, or all of the above and I felt they needed to be shared. Hope you enjoy!

1. Why should I blog and what should I blog about? by: Mari Walker
While I am of course interested in all things social media related I also have been spending most of my time applying this and being a part of the online horror community. Mari is someone who I’ve spoken to a few times as a fellow horror fanatic and at the same time is a web developer and internet junkie. This last week I ran across this post she made that is a great post that can be summed up as- “If you don’t blog but are interested, try.” What a lot of people forget is that blogging can be either for money or for fun and this is the point she is going with. Traffic, followers, etc doesn’t matter if you are blogging for fun and not money. Selling you on the fun part she than makes subtle suggestions on strengthening the content of anyone who does write in a positive way that isn’t overselling them on the idea of blogging but just to those who are interested. I’d suggest this article to anyone you know who is interested in blogging and has been unsure if they have wanted to take the plunge.

2. A Simple Way To Funnel New Traffic & Sales From Buried Blog Archives by: Lynn Terry on ProBlogger
This is an absolutely great article using a very solid method of using old content to obtain new readers and new sources of readers. It’s simple, it looks as if it will be effective, and something I hope to try later this year on one of the blogs I run as well as a slight variation of one of the ideas listed here. Lynn truly helped anyone who has had an informative site that has been running for awhile to properly convert old content into being a useful resource.

3. 10 Smartest Things You Can Do to Promote Your New Blog by: Christian Russell on David Risley
Honestly there is nothing “new” in this post for internet marketeers out there however it is a good overview of what to do while starting a new blog (which I read over while planning to launch a couple more in the horror niche I have not only found myself in but love working in.) This is the perfect post for anyone who has a new blog or is new to marketing their blog and worth a read for either category.

4. Social Media is NOT an End by: David Spinks
This one is short, sweet, and to the point. The title pretty much says it all and is a quick read on why social media is NOT an end and I 100% agree. Social Media can be used as a tool, a means to an end, however anyone who is into online marketing should more than know this to be true. It’s a quick read but one anyone who doesn’t agree with should browse quickly and take to heart. It’s an easy lesson to understand but not one always easy to learn for those who can’t separate fame and fortune.

5. When Should a Freelancer Barter? by: Thursday Bram
This read couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It probably wouldn’t have usually made it, even being a good read, aside from the absolutely perfect timing of it. I’ve been recently speaking with quite a few web developers trying to narrow down who I want to go with to work on a few sites on the off chance the developer I was speaking with ends up not getting back in touch. A few of these developers have mentioned being open to barter in products or services and this read helped a lot while speaking to them in ways that would benefit us both.

Companies That Own Up To Mistakes That Don’t Have To? Winners

Recently I won a contest from Teenormous that allowed me to pick a free shirt from one of the sites that they are associated with. I was e-mailed the coupon code, went to the site, picked a shirt, put in the code, and was ready to go! Well I thought I was until I saw that the coupon didn’t cover S&H. While I know most contests would cover S&H I didn’t think it was a big deal and put the order through. $5 for a shirt is a lot better than $20 so I wasn’t really going to complain.

Teenormous though didn’t feel right about this. They contacted everyone who had picked a shirt through this site and offered us a way to make up for it. While one would think that would just be a S&H coverage they instead offered us a free shirt (with S&H included) from one of the other contest sponsors. So for winning we actually were able to pick 2 shirts instead of 1. THAT is how to have great customer service and get good press at the same time. Thanks Teenormous for taking care of your customers. I was both surprised and impressed with your response to the situation and am overjoyed you went out of your way to take care of your readers. That’s really how to win customer loyalty right there.

I know it’s been quiet around here as of late. Between a very hectic work schedule the past couple of months, a lot of things going on with the family, having my social life, AND keeping all of my actual projects this blog has fallen to the wayside. Of course as stated in the first post on this site it was mainly made for me so I’m OK with the lack of updates. Those that still come to the site may disagree as it’s still pulling in traffic on a daily basis. Which is kind of surprising.

What To Expect

This New Layout – I’m currently using Blog Theme from Woo Themes which I plan on customizing a bit over the next few months. It’s simple, straight forward, laid out nicely, and look decent by default.

Wordpress Plugin Reviews – I plan, at the very least, to try to review one new plugin each week for Wordpress. I test out at least one a week so I want to fit in at least one for a review.

Online Service and Application Reviews – More of the same! This is what I was heavily doing before I took a bit of a break from the blog. I am going to narrow my focus on these though. From this point on I will focus primarily on those services and applications that I feel would be useful to bloggers and entrepreneurs.

More Project Updates – For as much as I do on the projects I work on I never really got around to writing updates here on the major changes to any of them. This will be changing.

Friday 5 – While I do not expect to do this weekly it will be on my list of posts to work on. When I see 5 outstanding blog posts in a week I will be sure to share them with you!

With everything going on in work and projects right now I can guarantee you that this personal blog will not be nearly as active as it was for a bit. However I will have it back on track in the near future for at least a few updates each week.

IndyBudget – Budget, plan, forecast, organize and analyze your personal finances to achieve your goals.

IndyBudget is a great app on how to plan out your budget in a way that lets you plan for your expenses on what you will need to spend compared to what you are earning. If you are trying to worry about your personal finances this is probably the best free applicaion you can find.

Looking to schedule your banking, retirement, and debt accounts? IndyBudget has you covered! All of this is done through an easy to use expense sheet that factors in your various income and expenses.

Free Features of IndyBudget

Any good online service these days tries to lull you in with a fully functional product that is free to use and once your hooked and want to buy those other features lull you in with a cheap upgrade. Smart marketing plan and for this app, if you have a use for it, is a GREAT deal!
Secure & Safe- industry-standard encryption and data protection
Anonymous & Private- no names, account numbers, PINs, phone numbers or addresses
No Ads, No Third Parties- no sharing/selling your data with/to third-parties
Internationalization- customizable regional settings, currencies
Budget Plan Wizard- get started in a few simple steps
Bank, Retirement & Debt Accounts- unlimited accounts
Recurring Actions & One-Timers- avoid repetition, schedule recurring actions; schedule one-timers ahead of time, or afterwards
Tags- categorize your spending with the flexibility of tags
Quick Expense Sheet- quickly add one or more recent or upcoming one-time expenses
Upcoming Activity- view 45 days of upcoming scheduled activity and estimated account balances
Email Reminders- get weekly reminders of upcoming activity
Goals- keep yourself motivated and focused
Cancel Account- we’d hate to see you go, but we’ll permanently remove your data from our system

Pay Features of IndyBudget

While the core services above are free there is a pay version of this service that offers a few more features that may prove beneficial. At $4.99 a year (yes that’s year not month so it shouldn’t be blowing your budget) you get:
Asset Management- track real estate, vehicles and other property
Budget Plan Overview- analyze scheduled income and expenses
Monthly Statements- analyze actual income and expenses
Net Worth Outlook- net worth projected for the next 12 months
Tag Manager & Report- rename and delete tags; search for untagged activity; spending-by-tag report

Interested? Check out IndyBudget today!

GRAZEit – Helps You Find What You Didn’t Know You Were Looking For

GRAZEit is a plugin for your web browser whose purpose is to allow you to share anything you find online with both friends and connections. The plugin itself will display relevant content to what you are currently looking at while browsing websites and comes from both friends and fellow bloggers you choose to associate with in this service. You also have the ability to have incoming content from anyone in the GRAZEit community.

A plus on this feature is that you are able to add your own content to the service in order to help spread information to relevant pages, easily allowing more people looking at one topic to find more information on it. It’s a great resource both to find more information on a topic you are currently looking into as well as share your own information or sites that you have found with others.

A video demonstration of the service after the jump:

Tweak Today – A Daily Mission

Tweak Today has a goal of giving it’s users a mission everyday. It can involve various forms of media and interacting with others to acomplish and is quite an interesting project. The purpose of the site is to allow for interaction with others, re-examine some of the things that you take for granted in your daily life, increase creativity, and finally to try new things.

Each day a new mission is posted that you can participate in that is voted on by the community in advance. You are able to suggest as many missions as you want on a daily basis and that alone can spawn new ideas. There is always one mission each day though you are able to freely explore the archives if you want more things to do or get a few new creative ideas. If you are someone stuck in a rut or looking for new and creative ways to express yourself this is a great place to check out. Some of the ideas on their own are something that would just be fun to do if you have a creative side.

Past Tweak Today Missions

- Take a picture of a scar and tell it’s story.
- Do a google image-search on your name and post the most interesting result.
- Take a picture of yourself holding a picture (or postcard) in front of the actual location.

Twerbose – When 140 Characters Just Aren’t Enough

Twerbose just has a great name, merging the ideas of the 140 character limit with users of the service who are a bit ‘verbose.” If you are one of the many people who run into a problem with the 140 character limit and need just a bit more this could be the service for you. Once upon a time we could rely on IMs, e-mail, etc in order to converse back and forth with people but I’ll be honest I’ve met quite a few people who I do not know or speak with outside of Twitter. Constantly I’ve had to rephrase or send multiple tweets to get an idea to someone. Twerbose is the solution to having this problem.

Basically it will display the start of your over sized message with the equivalent of a “more” link at the end that will take you to the user’s Twerbose account that shows the full message in question. On the full message you are able to respond, comment, etc. Some people really don’t seem to get it though as a few of the examples looked like blog posts! If you feel inconvenienced by the 140 character limit Twerbose is a great tool to get around it. Actually thinking of it for the blog posts. I’ll have to re-browse the Twitter wordpress plugins out there- having an option to display your recent tweets in this format would be a plus.

Are You A Freelancer That Uses Twitter?

Tweetlancers is a free resource to allow both businesses and individuals post jobs they need to Twitter at a targeted audience or on the flip side if you are a service provider looking for work you can use the same service to find potential clients.

It’s a simple service to sign up on that will:
As a client – Allow you to easily contact providers who can help fill the work which you need to finish.
As a service provider – Show any incoming tweets that are targeting freelancers with open jobs.

By signing up on this site when you take a look at one of these tweets you will see the contact information of the client or provider you wish to work with. It’s another source to get freelance work done or find freelance jobs depending on which you are looking for. Freelancing is obviously a huge business on the Internet and new ways to find work or workers is always a boon to everyone involved. If you are a, or work with, freelancers you may want to try Tweetlancers.

Task Mate – Easy Project Management Online

Task Mate is a simple, yet effective online tool to keep track of your tasks. Not only are you able to use this tool to keep your personal tasks organized but also those that you work on with others.

You are able to both control and monitor your tasks. You are able to have the application focus on single tasks or view them all at the same time in order to make sure your progression is working at the pace that you want it to be.

Task Mate Features

- Easily create, manage and assign tasks.
- Track estimated time against actual time taken.
- Personal dashboard communicates the status of your projects.
- Simple drag and drop interface for managing tasks.
- Hosted on our secure, backed up and reliable web servers.
- Quick to set up.

Task Mate Pricing

The only downside to this application is that anything past the base option isn’t free. The free version does allow for 5 projects to be running at a time however offers no file sharing space for collaborative projects. Each tier above that allows for more space and open projects up to the “Platinum” level which is unlimited projects and 50GB. However if that isn’t an issue than this is an easy to use and effective project management solution online- Task Mate should be one of the first options you take a look at.