Slashdot Mirror
Where Have All the Pagers Gone?
oddRaisin writes "After recently sleeping through a page for work, I decided to change my paging device from my BlackBerry (which is quiet and has a pathetic vibrate mode) to an actual pager. After looking at the websites of Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, I'm left scratching my head and wondering where all the pagers went. I can't find them or any mention of them. Pagers of yore offered some great features that reflected the serious nature of being paged. They were loud. They had good vibrate modes. They continued to alert after a page until you acknowledged them. I didn't have to differentiate between a text from a friend and a page from work. Now that pagers seem to have become passé, what are other people doing to fill this niche? Are some phones better pagers than others? Are there still paging service providers out there?"
Youmail has made voicemail and my cell phone a lot more livable. It takes over for the voicemail functions of your provider and records the incoming message. It optionally sends you a text message with the details of the call (phone number, duration, message left or not) and optionally texts or emails you a transcription of the message. The free version uses what is at times a comical transcription, but it is still normally enough to figure out what your caller was trying to tell you (and sometimes it is spot-on), and the texts and emails are free too. The $7 a month version uses a more accurate transcription method.
It also emails you an MP3 of the message. Of course, you can also call them up and listen to your messages, or go to the website and listen to them online rather like visual voicemail. It makes voicemail almost as good as a pager in a lot of ways. ;-)
Where do I get a job where I get paid for sleeping through pages? Some of my code may look as if I was asleep on the job, but that excuse doesn't really work.
Page is a noun referring either to printed material or to a human being paid to take messages, pager is a noun meaning a paging device.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."