US Service Men And Women Get Priority With Google Voice Invites.

Google Voice For Service Members
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.
This will be a great service for Service men and women who are always on the move. I know because I have a childhood friend who is in the US Navy and I will be lucky if I could talk to him once in six months. Usually our communications are via email. with Google Voice, I think I will be able to hear him a bit more.
There is an account of U.S. Army SGT Dale Sweetnam, Army Fellow, who has a guest post on Google as to how this is helping him and his family and friends.
"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."
Great, patriotism, can come form all angles. Way to go Google, these little gestures mean world to some.

Official Google Blog: Audio care packages for service members with Google Voice

Tags: Google Voice, US Army, US Navy Google Voice For Service Members

US ARMY Marches Towards VoIP, Unified Communications.

US ARMY Marches Towards VoIP, Unified Communications.
The Army plans to migrate all of its circuit-switched voice communications to packet-switched voice-over-IP technology, said Col. Scot Miller, head of the organization that builds and runs the Army’s global telecommunications network.

The transition to VOIP, implementation of a unified communications architecture and the movement to centralize IT applications in area processing centers are the three primary initiatives that will dominate the agenda of the Army’s networking group for the foreseeable future, Miller said.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, as the lead agency responsible for the Pentagon’s networks and IT systems, is evaluating VOIP to assess whether it meets the strict availability and operational standards that are necessary before it can be used to carry command-and-control voice calls for the military. DISA likely won’t approve the use of end-to-end VOIP technology until 2009 or 2010, Miller added.
News Source Government Computer News.

tag: VoIP, Unified Communications, US Army, DISA