No time to write? Call your story in to us.

Google bought GrandCentral.com, an application that “let people centralize telephone services, screen their calls, and listen to voice mail over the Web,” and plans to relaunch it as “Google Voice” this week. The new version of this service will not only allow us to record your calls with stories or news tips and then play them on our site. It will also use speech-to-text technology to transcribe the calls made from GrandCentral.com/Google Voice from voice into print.

We are pleased that we have a GrandCentral call-in number at Chicagotalks.org and so we will be able to convert it to Google Voice as soon as Google starts doing the changeover. In the meantime, you can use the button on our sidebar to call in a story or newstip. If you are a podcaster, radio or broadcast journalist, we encourage you to add an audio dimension to our coverage of Chicago’s neighborhood news right now. We hope we will hear from you soon.