You know me. I like to try out new things. One of the new things I’ve been testing out is Google Voice. I’ll talk about it more in another post but let’s just say it’s solving a lot of problems for me.

One thing I’m testing out is to encourage you to leave verbal comments to the blog. Let’s face it, some things are best said verbally. You can hear intonation, you can hear passion, your voice is fun, and you can sing a comment! Plus, and this is big for a lot of people, you can leave me a comment and make in personal to me and anonymous to everyone else.

Feel free to test it out! Even if you try it just to try it and not really leave a comment, that’s OK!

How it works:
1. Press the “call me” button. Go ahead, do it now, it just shows you the next step.
2. Enter your name and the phone number you’d like to be called at. Not my number, not a secret password, the number of the phone you’d like to use to leave me a comment. If you chose “keep number private” that means it will still use that phone to connect you to leave a comment, I just won’t be able to see that number.
3. Click “connect.”
4. A random phone number will call you, pick up. That’s Google Voice calling. That’s not my Google Voice number, it’s just random.
5. You will get a special greeting from me, saying hello and telling you what to do. This will not ring my phone, it’s basically a voicemail box.
6. You leave a comment or message. If it’s a private message or comment between you and me, please let me know.
7. As soon as you hang up, Google Voice alerts me that I have a new message. Depending on the time of day I may get a text message or an email or the Google chip embedded behind my retina will flash.
8. I listen to the message, read the message in email, or get a text of the message. Google Voice, using black magic, converts your message into text and gets it to me. I receive it right away though I may not get to it right away.
9. If its relevant, I post the verbal comment on the blog. Obviously, if its a personal message or something you’d like to keep anonymous, that’s just between me and you.

Got it? 1-2-3… GO!