Tales of a Technology Omnivore

There’s no more need for voicemail.  It once served a purpose — to communicate short messages that can be checked at your convenience and acted upon.  But today text messages and email have obsoleted the voicemail!  I like how Penelope Trunk says it in her blog:

“It will come as news to most people over thirty that most people under thirty do not leave voice mail messages. Think about it: Voice mail takes a long time to retrieve and it’s almost never earth-shattering, so it’s not worth the time it requires.”

Receiving voicemail has become my pet peeve.  Two of my friends are the only ones who leave me messages now — and the message is “It’s me, call me back.”  And I need to call voicemail for THAT?!?!  Actually I do receive voicemails from my mom and dad but I don’t mind those because they can’t use text messages at all.

The call history functions as my paging system.  If you called me my phone will tell me I missed your call.  I will assume if you called me you still want to speak to me.  So there’s no need for the “It’s me, call me back” message!

OK so now for the solutions:

Youmail.com is a voicemail replacement that works with most carriers.  Youmail receives your call and takes messages which can be listened to through a web interface.  Very nice.  You get an email that someone called and when you click on the link the message plays back.  You can have different greetings for different callers which is a nice feature..  Professional message for all callers except your friends which can get custom greetings.  You can also elect to REFUSE messages from certain callers.  I used this feature once.  On the person who leaves the “It’s me, call me back” message. LOL  Youmail is free.

Another solution is Simulscribe.com.  Simulscribe is another voicemail replacement system but this one is even more convenient.  It takes messages and converts them to text messages or emails which eliminates the need for you to listen to anything.  This is a premium service and costs $9 a month.