I used to think, "What's the big deal about visual voicemail? Who cares?" But now that I've been using an iPhone for about a year, I get annoyed with any phone that doesn't have it. Prioritizing voicemail messages and going back to important saved messages is an exercise in pure frustration without a visual log. And there's nothing worse than calling someone back and admitting that you don't really remember what their message was about because you couldn't find it among your 99 other saved messages.
Anyone who has an iPhone can appreciate the benefits of visual voicemail, even if they weren't particularly excited about this feature when first introduced to it. But what if you don't have an iPhone and have no plans to get one in the near future (there are, after all, plenty of good reasons to choose a different smartphone, especially if you're not addicted to browsing on your mobile)?
That's where PhoneTag's SimulSays comes in (assuming you have a compatible BlackBerry phone or Windows Mobile smartphone). A little background may be called for here: PhoneTag is the new name of SimulScribe, a transcription service that converts the content of voicemail messages to text. SimulSays is a separate application powered by PhoneTag, which gives you a visual log of callers who left voicemail messages so you can sift through your messages in the same way that iPhone users do. SimulSays can be used in conjunction with PhoneTag's transcription service, and is free to PhoneTag users. SimulSays by itself is $4.99 per month (after the 7-day free trial).
As with the iPhone, SimulSays creates a visual log of your voicemail messages in chronological order, and gives you the name of the caller (or number of the caller if he's not in your contacts), and the date and time of each message. You can reply by phone, email or SMS, and forward voicemail audio files by email.
SimulSays works with BlackBerry Pearl (T-Mobile and Cingular), BlackBerry 8800 (T-Mobile and Cingular), Blackberry Curve (Cingular), and Windows Mobile smartphones.
Posted by lydia Category: cell phones feature
Tags: visual voicemail
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