I have to admit, I’ve considered myself “honored” for having been a part of the GrandCentral beta for the past couple of years.

In a nutshell, GrandCentral gave you a (free) phone number for life, let you route that number to any combination of phones (landline, and/or cell), and a unified voicemail system that notified you when you had a message.

Google bought GrandCentral in 2007, and nothing much happened to the service… Most followers thought it died.

Last week, Google announced (in typical, unnecessarily mysterious, vague, and cryptic Google fashion) that GrandCentral was being re-launched as “Google Talk.”

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Every now and again, there’s a cool little app that comes-along, and makes life easier.

Let me introduce, “Affixa.”

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Chris Wood in the UK (Affixa’s developer) over the past months, and now that the beta is done, and the product is in release, I have to rave.

Download Affixa now!

Affixa lets you make your web-based email application your system’s default email client (right-click a file, and send using Gmail, or Yahoo…).

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If you’re not familiar with GrandCentral, it’s a nifty beta (web-based) telephone system Google acquired in July of 2007.

Naturally, those of us using (and loving) the service were excited about the possibilities.

I use GrandCentral here at webgroupWest (it was only made available in the US).

What is GrandCentral? In a nutshell, you sign-up, and get a free phone number associated with your account. From the (web) interface, you can set-up GrandCentral to ring any (of several) phones simultaneously (home, cell, office, etc.), each time someone calls your GrandCentral number.

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IM & chat have been frustrating for me.

There are just too many (incompatible) systems, and it seems that you need them all if you’re to stay in-touch with your contacts… Some people use MSN, others use Yahoo, and still others use AIM…

My computer would be out of memory if I ran them all.

And I didn’t even mention Google Talk (my personal favorite).

So, for years, I’ve been on a quest to find “the ultimate” universal IM client program… One that would let me chat with everyone.

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