Okay, Rural America, Google Voice is yours. Recall that earlier rural lawmakers and telephone providers complained that Google was blacklisting rural phone numbers for use with Google Voice. Google said these services charged too much for access.

 At the time, Google clearly named small phone providers as ones that overcharge — and, in fact, Google blocked the number for the campaign office of U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, the Minnesota Democrat and chair of the House Ag Committee. Google told the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday that it was now blocking calls to fewer than 100 numbers, most used for phone sex services. "We have found that calls to a relatively small number of telephone numbers generate vastly disproportionate costs," Google's FCC letter said. 

Google Voice gives people a single number. Calls to that number can be forwarded to other numbers or to voice mail. A call to the Google number, for example, could ring a home, office and cell number at the same time. Information here on this service. 

Robert Beall won the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest with the portrait above. Beall, the Washington Post tells us, is a farmer, fish taxidermist and wildlife artist from Maryland — and after 27 years of trying, he's finally won the only art competition sponsored by the U.S. government. 

The government prints 3.1 million duck stamps a year. You can't mail a letter with a duck stamp. You need a stamp to hunt ducks, and stamps are collected by birders, hunters and philatelists. The government has been printing duck stamps since 1934 and the program has raised more than $750 million, enough to purchase 6 million acres of wildlife habitat.

Beall painted a wigeon. He first entered the competition in 1982 and in 1983, he came in second — losing to a pair of wigeons. The Fish and Wildlife Service selects five waterfowl a year for the contest. This year the Service picked the wood duck, the gadwall, the cinnamon teal, the blue-winged teal and the wigeon. Beall thought the wood ducks would drive the judge snow-blind and that the teals were "niche ducks." So he painted a wigeon, and won. "Now I'll always be referred to as a Federal Duck Stamp winner," said Bealle. "It may not mean a lot to most people, but to me it means a hell of a lot." 

Read about how the "Pink Ladies" revitalized Halstad! Kevin Bonham, in the Grand Forks Herald, has a great story about how women have been starting businesses like crazy in the Minnesota town. Now there are seven women-owned businesses among the dozen or so in the town of 600. Halstad's motto is "The Way Rural America is Supposed to Be." These days, that means rural America is getting a tad pink. 

Bonham lists the "Ladies of Halstad" (their designation) in a fascinating review of how small businesses get started. The first woman to start a downtown business was Dr. Joy Hollinhead, a dentist. A North Dakota native convinced her to open a practice in the state, and so she did. She recently put up a new $400,000 building on the town's main street. Roberta Hettervig re-opened the Halstad Cafe in 2005. It had been closed for a year, but Hettervig had grown up on a farm and knew how to cook. “If you can feed 12 people, you can feed 20, and if you feed 20, you can feed 40,” she said. Pia Thurland (above), a native of Denmark, opened Eagle Tree Feed Store and Horsemanship in December. She's married to a Native American who liked Halstad because it was central to his trucking business. She decorates her store with pictures of her customers' animals and with miniature hay bales.

“It’s really interesting that we would have so many businesswomen in a small community,” said Randy Aarestad, Red River State Bank president. “Other than the hardware store and the bank that are owned still by men, the private businesses are operated by women. It’s kind of taken on a flavor of its own.”

Claudville, Virginia, pop. 916, is making Internet history. The tiny rural community is the first place in the nation to make use of TV white spaces – broadcast frequencies freed in the transfer to digital television – for wireless high-speed Internet service.

"Due to its availability and range, TV white spaces have proved to be a very cost-effective way to distribute high-speed Internet in this heavily forested and hilly rural community," Peter Stanforth told Reuters. Stanforth is CTO of Spectrum Bridge, one of the companies that contributed computer hardware, software and expertise to the project.

Because the white space channels can pass through walls and trees and cover long distances, they provide an ideal medium for rural broadband Internet.

Jerry Whitlow, administrator of Trinity Christian School in Claudville, told Reuters, "Our students and teachers did not have access to computers or broadband connectivity until now."