Every once in a while something comes along and changes the way we live. Gmail revolutionized email by giving users practically unlimited storage when 10 megs was the industry standard. Tivo ond DVRs changed the way we consume TV. Now a new service from Google may be able to do the same thing for telephones.

GrandCentral is a new service that gives you a new local phone number. Why would you want another number? Well it’s because of what it can enable you to do with that number. The idea is that this new number becomes the last one you ever need. You can answer calls to that number from any phone, and make calls originating from that number. That is only the beginning though.

Think of features you would normally pay a hefty monthly fee to use,(Visual Voicemail, Custom Ring tones for inbound callers, Call Screening, Custom Spam Filtering) Grand Central does it all for free. They offer way too many features to fully describe them all, but to illustrate just look at the SPAM filtering. Say you have someone who calls you who you do not want to talk to, not only can you send their call straight to voicemail, you can have grand central generate a phone number disconnected message, just for them!

Check out this NYTimes article on the service or just see for yourself by going to grandcentral.com