j e s r u s h . c o m

I hate voicemail, but until I saw the iPhone commercials I could never fully explain why. The commercials nailed it: regular voicemail is irritating because you have no control (”Press 1 to hear the next message”) and no visibility (Where in the seven message queue is the message from john?!?). In addition, many voicemail systems make you press too many buttons to get to that first message (’Scranton Man Faints from Voicemail Fatigue’).

Apple’s solution is to buy an iPhone with its “visual voicemail” fanciness. It’s an elegant one, but I’m not paying $500 for better voicemail. Enter <a href=”http://www.phonetag.com/”>PhoneTag</a>. PhoneTag is a subscription based service where you redirect your voicemail over to their voicemail system. Most cell phones and many office phones can handle this “redirection” by dialing a short code (which PhoneTag provides). Once redirected, any callers who reach your voicemail go into the PhoneTag system where they leave a message and–here’s the kicker–it gets transcribed into an email or txt msg and sent to the recipient(s) of your choice.

I’ve been trying it for a week and I’m completely hooked, and at only $0.35cents/message its not too expensive either. They push a little window mobile application that goes along with it, but as long as you have a phone with email or text messages you don’t even need the application. Recommended!

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