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Grand Central is one of those startups that really interested me. Basically, you sign up for a phone number with Grand Central and give that out. You utilize Grand Central’s software to do a multitude of functions, including ringing multiple phones and screening calls. Basically, if you want your mom to ring both your cell and your home line but your cousin to only ring your home, you can set that up in Grand Central’s software.

Grand Central also has visual voicemail, one of the cool features of the iPhone, that allows you to listen to voicemail in any order and see who the voicemail is from before listening. In addition, all voicemails are saved in .mp3 format, so you can listen to your voicemail from any browser (and even forward it in an e-mail if you choose).

If you move or switch jobs, you simply change the forwarding number in Grand Central and everybody else still rings the same number. Of course, you’ll have to give out a new number initially because you cannot transfer your home/cell number to the service.

While all of this sounds tres cool (and it’s free), the problem was that Grand Central was a startup. Many cool startups go to the dustbin of history and in this case all of your contacts would now have a dead number, which defeats the entire purpose of the software. However, that issue appears to have been solved with the much rumored acquisition of Grand Central by Google being announced last week.

In grand Google fashion, the company was put into beta and users can only get into GrandCentral via invite. Since we’re moving anyway, I am seriously considering trying to grab “my number for life” and letting everyone have that number instead. That way everyone can call me or my wife and have it ring our home or our mobiles if we know that someone wants to talk to just me or her.