Figuring Out Voicemail, WOW!!!!

Like I said in my Day 3 post, I'm not voicemail guy. My greeting message is usually totally obscure. Right now, it's the play-by-play call of Brett Favre throwing an interception in the NFC Championship game. My favorite voicemail I've received lately is my grandmother, totally confused by it, talking to my grandfather about whether they have my correct phone number or whether maybe I just don't like getting voicemails. She hit the nail on the head, and I have since explained it to her :-).

Yesterday, I wondered about voicemail though, iPhone users know about visual voicemail. It makes it so you don't have to dial in to check voicemail. They just appear on your screen as they come in. I had tried to set up Google Voice on the evening of day 1, but got distracted or scared or something. But yesterday, I realized that if I'm in a dead zone and an important call is missed, I'd be hosed.

So today on another blog, Charlie asked me about Visual Voicemail. I'm here to take the arrows for you guys so I decided to figure it out.

Google Voice is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

I went through the set up wizard, had it set Google as my voicemail provider, then tested it out. From my home phone, I called my cell phone and left a voicemail. 2 minutes later, I got an email to my gmail account with this in the body along with the sound itself:

Hello, Just testing my voicemail. Goodbye.

Then I asked my friend Bob to leave me a message. Here's what it did with it:

Hey Brad, This is just calling to say hi, just roll over the all copies on here and they can another cup of coffee. Anything enjoying the sunshine bright and sunny herein Tennessee. So I turn what you're up to. Yeah, I know that the did say that you'regoogle voicemail. Subscriber is not available right now so that's what I'm saying.I'll talk to you Later. Bye Bye.

It doesn't transcribe perfectly, but I can really get the gist of what's going on. There is nothing like this at all on the iPhone. Apple rejected it. I told you all how I used to feel about voicemail above. This has changed my mind completely. I have to give it more of a try, but I think I could almost prefer if some people leave me a rambling voicemail now :-).

So, a week ago, I was willing to spend $580 because I was frustrated with Apple and pretty much didn't want to be a walking billboard for them with my iPhone and white earbuds. After 2 days with my Nexus One, I changed my plan about proceeding with caution. Today, I'm here to tell you that if voicemail is an important part of your business, it might be worth the $580 to switch right now to something that just does it right.