Online phone messages

May 22, 2008 4:20 AM

Has anyone found a web-based utility for tracking telephone messages? In the Web 2.x world, it would seem that this would be a natural. Instead of little pink slips, a web site where the basic information would be recorded and then of course available to the recipient anywhere, even when she might be far away from the desk where those pink slips accumulate. If it doesn't exist now, shouldn't it?
posted by megatherium to computers & internet (11 comments total)

I use Vonage and I can track my messages, listen to them online, and get a notification in my email if I get a phone message. I can also download the messages to my computer and listen to them there as well as the Vonage site.

It also keeps track of my outgoing and incoming calls, should I want to look up a phone number or see who's called. Not exactly a free service, it's about $30 a month but I get calls to UK and Canada included, as well as long distance within the U.S. for that price.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 4:37 AM on May 22, 2008

The cable company in Montreal has started to offer a regular landline service, and you can receive your voicemail messages in your email. I would think other cities have this as well.
posted by OLechat at 4:48 AM on May 22, 2008

Not exactly what you mention, but Jott allows you to leave reminders, to-dos, whatever and you can then do what you want with them. I've used it to actually update my Twitter account on the road. They integrate voice->text with the service so you could get emails of the messages left to an account. However I believe they have to know the number you're calling from so it's geared more towards using it as a personal service, not giving the number out to others to leave you messages or anything like that.
posted by genial at 4:51 AM on May 22, 2008

any reason why email is not an option here? thats what i do if i am not being totally lazy in my office... i share a line with one other, and we just email each other when someone calls... pretty easy, and no web 2.0 required!
posted by Geckwoistmeinauto at 5:23 AM on May 22, 2008

Asterisk does this as well.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:32 AM on May 22, 2008

My husband's office uses a service like PhoneTag, which transcribes voicemails and sends them to your Inbox. So he never listens to voicemails, he reads them. (I hate dialing into my voicemail box, and wish my office used this.)
posted by junkbox at 6:06 AM on May 22, 2008

I second Vonage. It does what you're asking for and does it well.

And I believe that by supporting them you're supporting the little guy against all the big bad players in communications (I'm looking at you, Comcast).
posted by vincele at 6:09 AM on May 22, 2008

Yeah, what Geckowoistmeinauto said. As far as just getting your phone messages anywhere, what would a web-based utility offer that e-mail doesn't? At our office we are constantly out and about and on different computers, so we just have our secretary e-mail us our messages. She always has the "carbon copy" in her sent file, and we have our messages wherever we happen to be. We have her do the subject line as "VM John Doe" so they are easily searchable. (The VM stands for voice mail, which, now that I think about it, makes no sense. But whatever.)
posted by HotToddy at 8:24 AM on May 22, 2008

Most VOIP solutions have the ability to email you a wav or mp3 of the message the caller has left. Several services exist where your message will be transcribed and emailed to the recipient (CallWave is one of these, looks like junkbox mentioned another).

this is really quite common. as for web aggregation, well, i suppose it's possible if you could add some other compelling features, but I think showing up in your (almost always web-accessible) email inbox is enough for most people.
posted by fishfucker at 9:24 AM on May 22, 2008

try Youmail. It does all of that.
posted by muddylemon at 10:08 PM on May 22, 2008

It seems most of the answerers are bent on voicemail, which is not the asked question. We've done this sort of thing with PhoneSlips, but that of course requires a program installed on the user's laptop (or their having one of the supported PDAs).

Email is certainly cheaper, and just as easy. Of course one could whip something like this up in an hour or so if they had a web server. It's just a simple form and database and a list query and a detail query. Still, I fail to see the advantage of a form in this situation.

The main reason my clients like PhoneSlips instead of email is just so that when PS blinks, they know it's a telephone message, not a random email. Otherwise I fail to see the use, but that's just me.
posted by wierdo at 6:51 AM on May 23, 2008