j e s r u s h . c o m

If you like the idea of google voice (and its free voicemail to email transcription service) but aren’t crazy about the prospect of effectively changing your phone number over to google, then I’ve recently discovered a happy medium which might interest you.

You can redirect your mobile phone’s voicemail–just the voicemail–over to google voice. GV takes your incoming voicemails, transcribes them to text, and then emails them to you (or sends you a text msg). Here is how you set it up:

1) Forward your unanswered calls over to GV:

Verizon - dial *71[your google voice number] then send/talk

AT&T/Cingular/T-Mobile/Other - *004*1[your google voice number]*11# then send/talk

Sprint - Call Sprint support and ask them to enable Call Forward No Answer to your assigned Google Voice number

2) Set Google Voice to ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode.

You could optionally skip this step, but then callers would get 4-6 rings on your mobile phone, followed by 4-6 additional rings at GV. That’s a lot of rings. By turning on GV’s ‘do not disturb’ mode, you send GV callers right to voicemail so they skip the second set of rings. To enable ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, go to SETTINGS \ GENERAL [tab] \ Click the ‘Enable Do Not Disturb’ checkbox.

3) Done! Place a test call to test everything out.

The only downside to this configuration is that you basically have to leave GV in ‘do not disturb’ mode all the time. So you’ve relegated it almost entirely to a voicemail service. But at least this can serve as a first step towards an eventual total switchover.

jason

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!