Grand Central Archive

When NY-ers think of GrandCentral, most think of the happiest place on earth with all of the trains coming in and out and the black and white cookies from Zaro’s. But techies think of another GrandCentral, that is the very powerful telephony service now owned by Google.

The service is still in private beta and it’s been hard to find an invite but today Blogger has a post with a juicy link to grab an invite. GET INVITE NOW

Also, check out our interview with GrandCentral founder Craig Walker.

Earlier this week, GrandCentral celebrated their one year anniversary of their Project CARE program in San Francisco. The program gives voicemail accounts to homeless people in San Francisco and to-date they have given over 400,000 voicemail messages out. I have no idea how much this costs GrandCentral but it's a great service. With more and more cities removing payphones, this service becomes even more critical.

Craig, GrandCentral CEO notes, "The government can throw tons of money and resources at the homeless problem by providing housing, job training, medical care, etc., but if there’s no way to contact a person to let them know they got the job, or the room became available, or the TB test came back negative, then that money is MUCH less effective than it could be."

I have been in many cities in the U.S. and in Europe and I don't think any city has a worse homeless problem than S.F. It is great to see a startup doing what a big company could have been doing for years. Think about ways you can help your community.

Hats off to Craig and the team! If you want to learn more about GrandCentral, check out my interview from late 2006.