The “818? 310. Nice.” line in the movie “Swingers” was classic, but 13 years later it’s beginning to show its age.

This isn’t just because the real estate market has moved all the good girls to The Valley in Los Angeles. It’s because as more and more of us cut our land lines (at home and in the office), move from job to job and city to city, we have started to cling to that one number that can follow us anywhere: our cell phone number.

In fact, since I moved to Seattle, I have met half a dozen people that live here but have decided to hang onto their out-of-state cell numbers.

I can relate. I am keeping my old, out-of-state number too! But my decision was based on the fact that where my cell phone company could give me a new and shiny area code, they couldn’t put a message on my old line to let callers know my number had changed. I have a lot of long standing media relationship, and having them get a dead line wasn’t going to work.

Well I just nabbed my new Google Voice number and this is all going to change. I now have a single number (with an area code of my choosing) that I am putting on my business cards. One number, and each caller (friend, client, media, wife, bill collector) will be routed not only to a special message, but also to any number I choose.

Here are some of the things it can do:

• Screen calls before you accept them
• Hear voicemails as they are being left
• Automatically transcribes voicemails and deliver them to you via text, email, etc.
• Allows you to automatically forward both calls and texts to any phone number
• Allows you to create separate greetings depending on who is calling (e.g., my wife is from Germany and her family gets a special voicemail from her in German)
• Most importantly, gives you the ability to separate your business and professional lives with one phone number (and one cell phone)

To get a Google Voice number — go to www.google.com/voice and sign-up for a phone line. If you don’t mind having a random area code, you can put in words or expressions to see if you can nab a vanity number. I won’t put my number here, but I will say that it includes the words: ski and fun.

I "heart" my MiFi

A couple of weeks ago I was at CTIA in San Diego with my client Samsung Mobile to launch a new phone. We had some issues with WiFi, which is to say it wasn’t working! Between needing it to power Internet for some pre-release phones and for media to file their stories — let’s just say: AWKWARD. It actually all worked out beautifully and we had a great event. But while I was there, Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch.com was nice enough to let me borrow one of his five MiFi connections to fiddle with. This device is amazing. It fits in your front pocket (or back pocket if that’s your thing) and delivers about 30 feet of EVDO RevA or HSDPA speeds — which would have been perfect for our booth-side event.

I made an immediate note to self: buy several of these for team and have them at every event in the future. You should too!

Over the past two weeks, we’ve helped our client Volkswagen with the celebration of VAIL – the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory – on the Stanford University campus. (VW has the largest presence in Silicon Valley of any automaker and clearly is an industry leader in automotive innovation and technology. Need some proof? Check out Volkswagen’s ERL.)

Junior, the driverless Passat, waits for pedestrians

Part of the work included talking about super-cool demonstrations of autonomous cars – cars that drive themselves. This morning, we sent out photos of “Junior,” the famous driverless VW Passat developed jointly by VW and Stanford. That prompted this response from a reporter at The Wall Street Journal:

“Thanks for the information. The Highway Patrol has been calling mine ‘the driverless Passat’ for years.”

Was just reading a story by Chris Foresman at Ars Technica about the future of AT&T sans iPhone exclusivity.

There is no doubt that AT&T gambled (a lot) and won (a lot) with their bet on the iPhone. So let’s call it a success and move on.

What I think is a more interesting question to ponder: when will AT&T better leverages its quad-play (home phone, cell, Internet and IPTV) offerings to begin really owning the digital home. I am not talking about discounted package deals and single billing statements. Yawn.  What I am talking about is going into an AT&T store seeing a big, beautiful HDTV and getting it for free or near free (say $20 per month) for signing a 2 year commitment for new IPTV and Internet service.

When this happens, AT&T would not only drive up subscribers, but drive HDTV sales and services through the roof. I love going into Best Buy, but if AT&T was willing to off set the cost of a new HDTV like they do for cell phones, I’d be the first in line.

If you are a tech-nerd like me, take a step back before you blast me on the disadvantages of bundling. I know the customer service issues needed to be dealt with first! But most people don’t want to be CIOs of their house. They want a simple solution to bring everything together. And think — what’s the next logical step once all these things are connected together? Access to advanced content and services. Not just movies, but critically needed services such as remote home network management, off-site file back-ups (documents, movies, photos and videos), managed DRM so you can move content from one device to another (legally), and much much more.

I am not the first to prognosticate about the future of telco and cable companies (sorry satellite), so believe this isn’t a matter of if this will happen, but when. And when it does… that will be a hell of thing to be able to promote. Much more interesting than bundled billing!

Okay, so it has been for a while… but this time we really mean it! Stay tuned for ridiculously fascinating observations about the world of PR in the 21st century.