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Friday November 10, 2006 6:00 pm
Youmail: Individual Personalized Voicemail Messages
Gear Live reader “Emergency Trap” sent this in, letting us know how impressed he is with the free YouMail voicemail replacement service - thanks…er…Trap!:
I can tell Youmail is going to take off. It’s currently in a free Beta stage that couldn’t be more attractive. If you love your cell phone, Youmail is a fun customizable voice mail feature that adds another level of uniqueness to your phone.
At it’s core, Youmail is a service that re-routes your standard voice mail to their service which lets you assign multiple voice mail messages to specific numbers. It’s like assigning your favorite Barry Manilow song to your honey’s phone number. Their service is free and works with any cell phone, but they send you a TXT whenever someone leaves a message. You’ll need to check with your service plan to see how text messages are handled. You can set a default voice mail for all unknown calls, so don’t worry, your professional image isn’t at stake. One other feature offered is the “ditch mail” feature. They claim that if you get a call from someone you’d rather never hear from again, you can send a numeric code which will “give them a ditch mail, and you’ll never here from that person again.” You can access, record, delete, and manage messages from their site. Alternatively, you can choose to record and assign a new custom email from your phone.
I’ve signed up and found the voice interface to be clear and helpful. I’ve listened to a couple messages my friends left me, and they sound just as if I were using my service providers voice mail service. As of this writing, I haven’t gotten feedback from them on how my custom voice mail messages sound, but I listened to them on my computer and they sound fine-virtually indistinguishable from my service provider. I haven’t tried the ditch mail feature, and am a bit confused by it. I started wondering if they totally block that number or if they simply send some kind of default message stating that I don’t want to hear from them again. I’m counting on the former, but I have a feeling it won’t work for unavailable calls-which would really be great to stop telemarketers.
I don’t know how long this service will stay free. I’ll be surprised if they don’t start charging. The big service providers are already charging extra for customized ring backs, and other extra services. If it does stay free, then kudos to Youmail.
We are going to play with this service for a few days. If we are impressed enough, we will do a video review over on The Bleeding Edge. If you try it, let us know what you think.
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| YouMail via Emergency Trap
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Comments:
I wanted to thank you for posting my article about YouMail. I thought it was a bit weak. I really should have followed up on the “ditchmail” feature. However, you printed it, and I’m grateful. I’m still using the service on my personal cell. I really like it and plan to stick with it. On the picky side, I think some people might get annoyed with having to constantly delete the TXT messages. I don’t get a high volume of calls on my personal cell, so It’s not a big deal for me. You may want to think twice about using the service on your busy cells that accumulate lots of voicemail. Thanks again-Jeremy Stratton from Emergency Trap
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It is a very cool service. Just a heads up, I know for those on Cingular, you have the choice. The message waiting indicator works like normal so you don’t have to put up with the txt msgs. That said, on smart phones the txt msg is kind of handy cause you just click on an unknown caller’s phone number to call them instead of having to type in their number to call them. You can also turn the txt notificaiton off and auto deliver your voicemail to email, or simply be notified via email (which is good (and free) for those with data plans using Blackberries, etc. )
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Quoting: “I started wondering if they totally block that number or if they simply send some kind of default message stating that I don’t want to hear from them again.”
Ditchmail allows you to record a unique greeting, just as you do with a normal YouMail custom greeting. The only difference is after your greeting is played Ditchmail just hangs up instead of playing the beep and allowing the caller to leave you a voicemail. Because you can upload any sound file as a greeting, imagine uploading the wav file, “you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected” as a greeting to be played ONLY for your psycho ex. Because Ditchmail hangs up the caller, you never have to hear their voice again. (Also great for telemarketers!)
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“Ditchmail allows you to record a unique greeting, just as you do with a normal YouMail custom greeting. The only difference is after your greeting is played Ditchmail just hangs up instead of playing the beep and allowing the caller to leave you a voicemail.”-Ken
That’s really great to hear about the ditchmail feature. The description of it sounds nice. I wonder though, most telemarketers come through my Verizon phone as “Unavailable”. Technically I haven’t tried it, but I don’t think that I can assign a ringtone to an unavailable #(it just rings my “default” ringtone when I get those calls). Plus, even if I could assign a ditchmail to unavailable calls, I’m not sure I’d want to. I occasionally recieve unavailable calls that I’m glad I recieved.
Has anyone else experimented with the feature?
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So, just curious for those who use the service. Will the default “formal” greeting come on for those people not entered in my contacts, but do not have a blocked/unavailable number?
I don’t get many calls from “important” people but just making sure that the non-jeremy piven message works for people not in my phone directory
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Callers not assigned a specific greeting will hear your default greeting whether it is one you recorded or set as default.
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YouMail is the most coolest thing ever but I was forced to cancel….
I was going over my minutes every month and I couldnt figure out why until recently. Everytime someone would get diverted to voicemail, minutes from my cingular account was being deducted. So imagine If I get 10 missed calls a day (or more) then mutiply that by 30 days in the month….Thats alot of minutes!! So I had to let them go. And its a shame they never put that in the fine print. I should Sue because Cingular has no trace of them in the system.
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IM LOOKING FOR INVITATIONS WITH BUILT IN VOICE RECORDER SO I CAN PUT IN A PERSONALIZED VOICE MESSAGE
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@ Andru, Is this service compatible with my pre-existing phone system, just in case I want to use this exclusively for work? And is it true that it has hidden charges?
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