Last year, Google reinvented the phone—but unless you’re among the handful of VIPs who got access to the U.S.-based, invitation-only service, you probably haven’t noticed. Google Voice does several amazing things. It gives you a central phone number that rings all of your phones—when people call your Voice number, you can pick up at your office, your cell, or at your vacation house in Bermuda (and they won’t know the difference). Voice also transcribes your messages, rendering voice mail obsolete. And then there’s this: Because it routes all your calls through the Internet, it lets you call anywhere in the United States for free, and anywhere in the world for cheap, without a contract.