If you use GrandCentral for free phone call service, you’ll be happy to hear Google is releasing Google Voice. It’s only open to GrandCentral users currently, but will be open to a wider audience soon.

A few highlights of Google Voice:

• A single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones
• Voicemail
• Transcripts of your voicemail
• Archive and search text messages you send and receive

Check out the features to see how it works: https://www.google.com/voice/about

Phone bills can quickly carve a big chunk out of a budget, thanks to base rates and unending fees, so ditching the land line is an attractive idea. That’s one of the reasons I like Skype so much (see these postings I’ve tagged with “Skype”). MagicJack is another gizmo that makes nearly free phone calls a possibility.

This little doohickey is about the size of a pack of gum that plugs into your computer and household phone and offers unlimited local and long distance for the US and Canada. It’s $40, which is easily earned back within the first month of use. It also offers free directory assistance, call waiting, voice mail and caller ID.

Installation is easy: you plug in both ends and let the software automatically load itself onto your computer. Register and receive unique phone number (or port your existing numbers), and you can start to begin making calls.

How do you reach your constituency when they’re teenagers, don’t use e-mail, aren’t on Facebook and the cost of texting is prohibitively expensive? It’s a good question that came in to me today.

One option is to set up a Twitter account and start promoting it to your audience. This is a service that you can access from your PC and send short messages that your teens can subscribe to. Think mini-blog. Check out this handy list of questions from Twitter’s site.

Otherwise, most cell phone providers give e-mail addresses to their subscribers, with their cell phone number at the beginning and their provider name at the end (something like 1235551212@verizon.com). It’s generally free to receive e-mailed text messages for them and free for you to send them. Ask your teens who they have service with, and this will go a long way to connecting with them.