Sorely want visual voicemail? take a peak at me

[tread]

Youmail.com

I've been using this service for quite some time, and just like much of google is driven, its an ad based service thus free... Heres a small in review for the people that have not heard of this service... and forewarning, this is not an application developed for the android platform, but is useful nonetheless and my hopes are that a simple application will be produced in order to directly access your voicemail...

Once you create an account with youmail, you'll notice that the service is very graphically pleasing and simply put, an amazing time saver and extremely useful tool... Being flashed based, you typically can't use this on most windows mobile phones without the latest skyfire browser which is still in its beta stage, and you must sign up and wait in line in order to access the download for this... You set up the service, and its basically explained in the title of itself: visual voicemail... you can upload your gmail or outlook contacts to it, and any person that calls you and leaves a message, you'll be able to access quick and effectively through logging in on your computer (or hopefully the G1)... Not only can you upload your contacts, you can also:

- assign a picture to your contact
- make groups of contacts
- address a specific voicemail message for each person or group
- chose from a variety of premade messages you can use
- shorten your voicemail so when you call in you get instant access to them
- much faster than most cell phone carrier provided enhanced voicemail services
- have text messages sent to your phone notifying you of the person that left the message and at what time (or phone number)
- block numbers from your voicemail altogether

and tons more that I won't get into... They also have in the works a transcription service that will send you a text message (up to 4 messages i believe at this time) that does an admirable job at transcribing the message you just received into text message form so you can see if its important or not...

As you can see if you've experienced the visual voicemail service from the iphone and at&t, that its vastly superior feature wise than their service other than the lack of an applet that can run on your device natively...

so in summary, everyone should get it... its free, it works better than what you have, its an incredible time saver if you get a lot of voicemail, and quite simply it makes your communication life a lot easier...

if you decide to use it, support it and spread the word like i do when i find a product that i like a lot, let alone find a free one that this good...

Dan

[RussianSolja]

i love youmail.com i also been useing them for quite sometime. just love there service.

[RussianSolja]

visual voice mail is super nice --- I wonder if T-Mobile will ever offer it?

lets only hope for the best

[tread]

probably isn't that hard, and i would expect they'd have to invest some money in new servers specifically for that purpose, but why not just go with youmail.com?

i'm sure eventually they're gonna have a software applet for the android platform, which will be great... only downside is you'll probably see some ads, but seeing as how much revenue is generated by google ads for google, there is no doubt that advertisements will show up through some free programs somewhere on the G1

[mazimi]

I believe Grand Central (beta) has visual voicemail as well and it is owned by, you guessed it, Google: http://www.grandcentral.com/

I haven't used it too much but I do have a number reserved on there and have it activated with my current phone. Looking forward to seeing how Google will integrate this into Android as part of their grand scheme.

[doomcomplex]

I've been using youmail almost since it was first started. It works great! I recommend it to everyone.

[tjferris]

I love youmail, I have posted this service on a couple of the other forums when people were asking about visual voicemail, Nice write up and I think it deserves it's own topic! I love the options on "ditchmail" and some of the pre recordings are just hilarious! I highly recommend trying out this service if you have an itch for visual voicemail!!

[ickyfehmleh]

I believe Grand Central (beta) has visual voicemail as well and it is owned by, you guessed it, Google: http://www.grandcentral.com/

I haven't used it too much but I do have a number reserved on there and have it activated with my current phone. Looking forward to seeing how Google will integrate this into Android as part of their grand scheme.

There's a well-known cheat that goes along with GrandCentral: add your GC number to your MyFaves list. Now every call that's routed through GC == free. Likewise for outgoing calls; have GC call you, then connect the call. TMobile does, however, state in their AUP that MyFaves is not meant for numbers 'connecting over 500' other numbers, or something along those lines. Luckily I don't know 500 people.

This becomes even easier with an Android device on TMobile since you could bring up the GrandCentral site via the web and have it call you immediately.

[MrGibbage]

What is meant by visual voice mail? I use grand central and like it, but don't really use it as much as I probably could/should. I never really liked having to press 1 to answer.

[PtheProfessional]

There's a well-known cheat that goes along with GrandCentral: add your GC number to your MyFaves list. Now every call that's routed through GC == free. Likewise for outgoing calls; have GC call you, then connect the call. TMobile does, however, state in their AUP that MyFaves is not meant for numbers 'connecting over 500' other numbers, or something along those lines. Luckily I don't know 500 people.

This becomes even easier with an Android device on TMobile since you could bring up the GrandCentral site via the web and have it call you immediately.

Sweet Tip!!!