One of the best innovations brought to light by the iPhone is visual voicemail. In any given day I can have dozens of messages. With every phone before it I had to to wade through message after message after message after message after ... (you get the idea).When I got my iPhone the visual voicemail […]
" />

Love Visual Voicemail, But This Is Even Better

Jan 18th 2008 by

quicktatelogo]One of the best innovations brought to light by the iPhone is visual voicemail. In any given day I can have dozens of messages. With every phone before it I had to to wade through message after message after message after message after ... (you get the idea).When I got my iPhone the visual voicemail was such a relief - I was now to be able to see who the messages were from and check them in the order I wanted. Then I could erase the ones I didn't need and keep the others if they needed further action. I was instantly smitten. What could possibly be better?I may have just discovered the answer in the form of Quicktate, a newly announced service that is in beta. Think Jott for voicemail. When you sign up with Quicktate (a simple process and free during the beta) your messages get forwarded to their service. A few minutes after the caller hangs up the message is transcribed an email or SMS is sent to your phone.Moreover, like Jott, you can call your own phone and leave yourself a message that will also be transcribed and sent to you. Plus, in both cases it sends you a link to the actual recorded message so that any garbled transcriptions do not keep you from getting an accurate message.I left myself a message from my home phone and this is what I got--"This is my first test of using Quicktate. I'm calling my iPhone and I will be waiting for the email to see how it works. Thank you."quicktteigraphicThe accuracy was 100%!!I then asked my wife to leave a message. A few moments after she hung up..."Hi Dan, It's me. You're asking me to send you a message, so I'm sending you a message." Once again the accuracy was 100%.However, depending on the quality of the connection and the clarity with which the speaker speaks your mileage may vary...The service is great and it even includes an iPhone optimized webapp. The only downsides that I can see are:1. As far as I can tell it replaces your custom message with their own (although that could change).2. The service is free now but who knows what it will cost when the beta ends. UPDDATE: I got an email from Quicktate's Lee Dorfman and you can, in fact, add your own personalized greeting to the message. The fact that your voice mails are transcribed and emailed to you is entirely transparent to the person calling. Nice. Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Continue reading:

TAGS: