Web Technology, Community Building, and Visualization for Urban Planning

I have an iPhone and AT&T for my cellular service and Vonage for my business phone. It isn’t a “land line” it is Voice over IP (VoIP) or a digital telephone line. Most companies such as Comcast and AT&T have converted their telephone service to VoIP without telling customers this is in fact what they are getting. VoIP has come a long way in the last 5 years with better reception and less static on the line assuming you have a high spend internet conection. It has its advantages too such as checking voicemail from the online control panel, receiving an email notification this number called and left a voicemail, and sometimes an email with an attachment so you can hear the message on your computer rather than dialing in.

I have seen Visual Voicemail on my iPhone and in my Vonage control panel and have often wondered what it is. I only notice it on my iPhone when it is unavailable on the voicemail screen. Vonage sends me emails about their visual voicemail service but I often ignore email advertisement.

A little investigating has revealed that iPhone visual voicemail is very different from Vonage’s visual voicemail.

Apple advertises visual voicemail as an enhanced interface to voicemail and up sells it as a feature. It is even featured as a key tool on the accessibility page. As it turns out, this feature is nothing more than viewing a list of your voicemails like email as quoted here:

“With Visual Voicemail, you can view all of your voicemail messages, then hear them in whatever order you want — just like email. The Play/Pause button lets you control playback, and the scrubber bar allows you to replay a portion of a message that might be hard to understand.”

I’m not sure how this will help someone who cannot hear and I really don’t think Apple should be advertising it as a disability feature.

I take this feature for granted on a daily basis. Of course I can pick and choose the order I want to listen to messages on my iPhone that is what I expect from Apple. I didn’t realize this functionality actually had a name. I do think it is a little misleading. To me, visual voicemail means voicemail is turned into a visual I can read or is it just me?

Vonage visual voicemail does mean just that. For an extra 25 cents per call my voicemails can be transcribed and emailed to me along with the audio file I already receive. I am a little curious about Vonage’s transcription accuracy and how they might handle issues such as buy versus by that are context sensitive. The service won’t work when you forward your calls to another number.

For obvious reasons I do not want every voicemail to be transcribed. I wish it didn’t cost for every incoming phone call. It would be great if I could turn this feature on only when I call myself so that I could have “notes to self” transcribed on-the-fly and sent to my email.

I often have moments of clarity when I am driving or taking a walk and call myself to make note. The problem is these electronic thoughts in voicemail get blended with other voicemails and are not properly sorted and turned into action. It has to be written down and added to the calendar or sticky notes for that to happen.

I could add another line to my Vonage plan for 12.99 and pay the 25 cents per call to have my own on-the-fly transcription service. But that won’t work either. Vonage Visual Voicemail will convert the first two minutes of long voicemail messages. The email message will advise you that the transcription was truncated and to listen to your voicemail to hear the complete message.

That defeats the purpose.

I heard about a free service called ReQall from a friend. You sign up for an account and call their assigned phone number to record notes, to do lists, ideas into the phone. It then transcribes your message and sends it to you in email, instant message, text message—whatever you prefer as both voice and text. The only drawback to this service is there is a one minute limitation.

I haven’t used ReQall for my “digital idea notepad” because I am terrified of getting cut off from a brilliant conversation with my best-friend (myself) mid-stream. That is the same reason I didn’t sign up for a second Vonage line either.

Vonage’s version of visual voicemail sounds like a great thing but has limitations. To some business owners, it might be helpful and worth the extra cost but to me it is not the right solution for brainstorming.

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