Someone reminded me today and when I looked, I had never mentioned GoogleVoice. This is a free application from Google.

What it does is give you a phone number in your area code (I suppose you could use other area codes as well or multiple phone numbers with multiple accounts). When someone calls that number you can select what phones to ring--your cell phone, your home phone, both phones, neither phone. If there is no answer, the call will go to a voice mail. The voice mail will be transcribed and sent to your email address as a transcription and a link to listen to the actual message.

Uses: You need to leave a phone number to see if someone calls you back within a given period of time. You don't want to leave your home number. Leave your GoogleVoice number. If/when they call back and leave a message, it will be sent to you as a date and time stamped message with the calling phone number.

You are on the road doing shops. You have a couple of minutes. You call and begin dictating information for the shop to your voice mail. When you get home you will have the text in email form, ready to copy and paste into Word and edit before pasting it into your report. Voice recognition software is not perfect, but it is a good head start on your report narratives.

GoogleVoice is available by invitation only at this time. You can request an invitation at [services.google.com]