TQuizzle.com

With a recent announcement from the Google Blog, Google says they’re offering anyone with a .mil (a military person) email address an ASAP invite to Google Voice.

It’s not easy to stay in touch with friends and family when you’re fighting in a country thousands of miles from home. I spent 13 months in Iraq as an Army journalist where I flew in Black Hawks over Balad and Baghdad working to generate news coverage about my fellow soldiers. The whole experience was physically and emotionally draining, but it was especially difficult when I called home at the end of the day and nobody was there to answer.

For servicemen and women who are constantly on the move, having a single number and an easy way to retrieve messages from loved ones can be invaluable. To help our service members communicate with their loved ones and show our support to those serving our country, Google is launching a new program. Starting today, any active U.S. service member with a .mil email address can sign up for a Google Voice account at www.google.com/militaryinvite and start using the free service within a day.

When you deploy, your life is put on hold. While you live and work in a different world, everyone else moves on with life back home. Your family and friends keep moving, and this sometimes means it’s just not possible for them to stay awake until 2 a.m. to receive a phone call. Calling Iraq or Afghanistan is seldom an option.

Google Voice provides a solution to some of these problems. Service members can set up an account before they deploy. Or if they’re already deployed, families can now set up an account for their service member. Loved ones can call to leave messages throughout the day, and then when that service member visits an Internet trailer, all the messages are right there. It’s like a care package in audio form.

Sergeant Dale Sweetnam, US Army

I’m really glad that Google’s doing this. This could mean the difference between families getting to leave daily voice mails and just simple “hellos” from home and only being able to occasionally get or make a phone call or a letter. This “Google” way, the service men and women have the opportunity to listen to these messages when they get the chance to get online. Whether that’s daily or weekly for them, it’s nice to see a system like this in place and a company like Google championing getting military families in touch a little easier.