If you’ve never heard of GrandCentral.com, just remember that you first heard about it from us. GrandCentral is a young company that was started by two guys: Craig Walker and Vincent Pacquet, both from Yahoo!. The company was recently purchased by Google for an undisclosed sum and is currently in BETA.

I was lucky enough to receive an invite to participate in the BETA and I must say that there are some really great things coming. In the span of a few hours I have moved all of my contacts from Facebook, Outlook and my cell phone to my new online address book on GrandCentral. I have setup my new voicemail and configured GrandCentral to work with my cell phone, home phone, work phone and Skype softphone.

Intrigued? Here is a how GrandCentral.com works: www.grandcentral.com/support/howitworks

On its own I have yet to find a more comprehensive online phone system. But pair it with Skype and you can achieve phone successes that have yet to be found online. Here is what I mean:

• I setup a free GrandCentral account
• I setup a SkypeIn number: $60/year (US dollars)
• I added all of my contacts into my GrandCentral address book
• Whenever I need to make a call: I click on the person’s name in my GrandCentral address book and it calls my SkypeIn number, then it calls them.
• No long distance. No fees.
• And the best part: my GrandCentral number shows up on the other person’s CallerID (a problem that Skype has yet to solve)

More info about GrandCentral
More info about SkypeIn