Approach enough college students, and you’ll find that many of them make do without all sorts of things – cars, textbooks, food other than ramen noodles.  Just about all students seem to carry cell phones, though, and Google’s decided to capitalize on this by inviting them to use Google Voice today.

To take advantage of this offer, students just need to visit google.com/voice/students and provide a .edu email address.  Google will then get back to them within 24 hours, and they can start taking advantage of all the different Google Voice features ("one number for life," free text messaging, and transcribed voicemails, among other things).

This represents a smart way of getting Google Voice in front of early adopters who are likely to embrace it.  College students are more apt to appreciate the fact that it’s free than worry about any quirks Google’s still trying to resolve, after all.

Using college students as a sort of starting point for making a good impression, Google Voice should be able to spread pretty naturally to their parents, grandparents, and younger siblings when Google’s ready to grant access to more people, too.

Unfortunately for everyone who’s not in school, Google still hasn’t hinted when that might be.