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With Verizon, if your phone doesn't ring because it's off or out of service and someone doesn't leave you a voicemail, that person may as well have never called you. Niether the phone, the network, nor the voicemail system has anything or indicate otherwise.

I've been using Callwave for well over a year now, because it lets me take/screen/callback missed calls on my computer, sends me emails (with transcriptions) with voicemails attached, and so on.

I've been eyeballing Google Voice for quite a long time now, as I dislike paying for Callwave (who doesn't have a yearly option, most unfortunately), but I wonder, when it finally becomes something I can use, if the "free" price tag will be enough to move me to the Google service.

It's most likely not every call. Just by those on the List.

Now that you mention it, I actually pay $5 a month for an identical service from a company called Callwave, and their voicemail transcription services aren't 100% unlimited unless you pay for a pretty high tier of service. Ironically, the voicemails that I choose to have the service transcribe for me are actually the ones a thief would want most.

This kind of attack into a voice portal is nothing new. I sat down with a fellow who owns a business VoIP telephony service and he showed me how he could alter his outgoing caller ID info to get into my voicemail directly from his telephone keypad... which makes it very easy to get into password-less voice portals/mail systems. Their voice portal requires a password, now that I think of it.

they are very happy that people all over the world use (unlocked) iPhones, and Apple executives have probably spent a lot of time thinking about how they could have played the game differently with AT&T to still get the contract with them (which you'll remember took a major infrastructural investment on AT&T's part to bring the iPhone -- and only the iPhone -- visual voicemail)

I'm always impressed at how some people can apparently divine altruistic motives from Apple's management decisions. Every unlocked phone deprives Apple of a large chunk of potential revenue from the sale of its device in the form of monthly cash payments. Several reports last year estimated the cost to Apple of so many unlocked phones as ranging from $500m to well over $1 billion (the difference comes about depending on whether you account for the "missing" devices as languishing in the supply chain or reshipped to Asia).

But critically, apparently believing Apple's propaganda regarding the "difficulty" of implementing visual voicemail functionality leads me to lose trust in any of your assertions. Visual voicemail is not hard to do - it was around for several years before Apple's version, and if it's so difficult, how is it that companies like GrandCentral/Google can retrofit visual voicemail onto basically any phone with either a WAP browser or SMS facility? Add in a 3G+ network and a real web browser and it really shines. Given enough network neutral bandwidth, many things are possible. Microsoft can add Visual VOIP to phones with Portrait. Apple's continued invocation of the Herculean nature of its visual voicemail is a marketing smokescreen designed to convince its more fannish customers that bedding down with the telcos comes from necessity, not avarice.

• * Method and Apparatus for Providing Expanded Telecommunication Service, US Patent 6,477,246:
• * Methods and Apparatus for Returning a Call over a Telephony System, US Patent 6,738,461
  
• * Methods and Systems for Telephony Call Completion, US Patent 6,879,677
  
• * Method and Apparatus for Providing Expanded Telecommunication Service, US Patent 6,898,275
  
• * Call Routing Apparatus, US Patent 6,968,174
  
• * Systems and Methods for Call Screening, US Patent 7,103,167
  
• * Methods and Apparatus for Returning a Call over a Telephony System, US Patent 7,266,185
  

You mean this visual voicemail? http://www.callwave.com/landing/widgets.asp Yes, so new. Never existed before. You win.

Callwave already gives me a service that for my needs, is better than the AT&T/iPhone visual voicemail. Speech-to-text on voicemails, with SMS or email delivery, and playback of voicemails from a link in the email.

The only thing lacking from iPhone now is working, standard IMAP IDLE push email (i.e. not a half-working proprietary thing with Yahoo).

As soon as somebody releases a working Chattermail-like app for iPhone, or Apple fixes their built in mail app to not suck balls, I'll switch over. For now, I can't give up my Treo's email capabilities to go back in time to the days when you had to press "Check Mail" to get your new messages or wait for every-fifteen-minute updates.

If you're receiving voicemail it's even worse.

If you hate cellphone voicemail systems, might I recommend Callwave. They have a free service that REPLACES your cell carrier's voicemail service. This nets you the following benefits:

  - Voicemail or missed call notifications can be delivered to you via text message to your phone, email, or are available on the Callwave website
  - Voicemail can be retrieved via email (link or attachment, at your option), accessing the website directly, or by dialing the service directly
  - Missed calls and voicemails will identify the caller by name if available (my cell service only transmits the caller ID number to my phone, so this is quite useful)
  - They even have a Vista gadget that can show you your last few calls/messages right on your desktop. Very handy.

Downsides I've discovered so far:

  - If you have a voicemail notification icon on your phone, it won't work anymore. This is tied to your carrier's voicemail system.
  - Recording quality isn't that great. It's acceptable for voice messages though.
  - They don't have a transcription service that will email you the text of your voicemail. Now that would be cool.

I don't know why more people don't know about this service. I've been using it for several months and am very pleased. I love the fact that I no longer have to waste minutes of my life every week navigating voicemail menu systems, and I'm no longer subject to my carrier's voicemail retention policy. This is the way voicemail was meant to be.

If you're receiving voicemail it's even worse.

If you hate cellphone voicemail systems, might I recommend Callwave. They have a free service that REPLACES your cell carrier's voicemail service. This nets you the following benefits:

  - Voicemail or missed call notifications can be delivered to you via text message to your phone, email, or are available on the Callwave website
  - Voicemail can be retrieved via email (link or attachment, at your option), accessing the website directly, or by dialing the service directly
  - Missed calls and voicemails will identify the caller by name if available (my cell service only transmits the caller ID number to my phone, so this is quite useful)
  - They even have a Vista gadget that can show you your last few calls/messages right on your desktop. Very handy.

Downsides I've discovered so far:

  - If you have a voicemail notification icon on your phone, it won't work anymore. This is tied to your carrier's voicemail system.
  - Recording quality isn't that great. It's acceptable for voice messages though.
  - They don't have a transcription service that will email you the text of your voicemail. Now that would be cool.

I don't know why more people don't know about this service. I've been using it for several months and am very pleased. I love the fact that I no longer have to waste minutes of my life every week navigating voicemail menu systems, and I'm no longer subject to my carrier's voicemail retention policy. This is the way voicemail was meant to be.

If that's the case, then you might want to check out CallWave's offering that allows the fetching of voicemail straight to e-mail (or SMS) in WAV files. To me, that beats Visual Voicemail hands down, since it is compatible with ANY carrier (VV only works on Cingular[?]) and allows you to check and save messages without even having to touch the phone. It even e-mails missed calls!

I never went back to regular voicemail after using this.

DISCLAIMER: I have NO affiliation with Callwave or its subsidiaries.

(Disclaimer: I work for CallWave. Normally I wouldn't shamelessly plug the company I work for, but this is exactly the kind of needs we try to meet.)

(Disclaimer: I work for CallWave. Normally I wouldn't shamelessly plug the company I work for, but this is exactly the kind of needs we try to meet.)

My dad says he's considered switching to Cable (the only broadband they have in my 1-horse home town), but he doesn't for 2 reasons:

1) A dial-up keeps his phoneline busy, and telemarketers are not likely to leave a message on CallWave

2) He does other things besides sit in front of his computer, so if he has to do critical updates or update his AV defs, he can set it to go and then walk away from the computer to do something else...

I figure most people his age (or older) think the same way if they even have a computer.

/nova20