nmeyrick
Member
Before anyone is turned off by the mention of Apple, this is not an iPhone specific thread at all.
I recently got a company iPhone on a Vodafone contract, and was keen to try out the visual voicemail I had seen on a friend's O2 phone. If you havent seen this it is a feature that means, instead of calling a number and listening to your voicemail messages one at a time you can see each message on screen, together with the time and who left it in the same way as you look at an email inbox. You can then chose which messages to listen to, or delete junk without wasting your time. I was disappointed to discover that Voda don't offer this service, but a quick google came up with a british company called Hullomail who offer the same service.
Hullomail can be used with any mobile phone provider, and works by setting up a redirect so instead of your missed calls going to your provider's voicemail server it is redirected to Hullomail's system. This records the message and then sends it to you, depending on the settings you chose, either to an app you can install on your iphone, android, blackberry or other smartphone, or as an mp3 file directly to your email.
So here are the two bits that are important to liveaboards:
1. The system has an option to set up an unconditional divert; this means that all calls are automatically sent to voicemail without trying your phone. This would be useful when you are overseas as it means you would pay no roaming charges when people call you, but would receive any voicemails (and notification of missed calls which do not leave a voicemail) either via your phone or email. You can then screen these and respond using the most cost effective method eg skype, local sim etc.
2. Whilst the service says you need a smartphone, I cant see any reason why you actually need one. It looks like you should be able to set it up using a cheap PAYG SIM which you set up to divert to your email, so you receive your answerphone messages any time you have access to email. This would enable you to have a fixed uk number you can leave people to contact you on, rather than constantly having to try and update them with your local SIM wherever you are.
The only cost you pay for this, provided you have an unconditional divert set up, is a uk land line call for the time that the person is leaving you the message, so a PAYG SIM with £5-10 should last for ages. If you have a conditional divert you would end up paying a roaming charge which would clearly be far more expensive.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has looked at or tried this approach, or anything similar? I have been using Hullomail for the last few weeks with good results, although so far only in the UK and with an iPhone.
Neil
I recently got a company iPhone on a Vodafone contract, and was keen to try out the visual voicemail I had seen on a friend's O2 phone. If you havent seen this it is a feature that means, instead of calling a number and listening to your voicemail messages one at a time you can see each message on screen, together with the time and who left it in the same way as you look at an email inbox. You can then chose which messages to listen to, or delete junk without wasting your time. I was disappointed to discover that Voda don't offer this service, but a quick google came up with a british company called Hullomail who offer the same service.
Hullomail can be used with any mobile phone provider, and works by setting up a redirect so instead of your missed calls going to your provider's voicemail server it is redirected to Hullomail's system. This records the message and then sends it to you, depending on the settings you chose, either to an app you can install on your iphone, android, blackberry or other smartphone, or as an mp3 file directly to your email.
So here are the two bits that are important to liveaboards:
1. The system has an option to set up an unconditional divert; this means that all calls are automatically sent to voicemail without trying your phone. This would be useful when you are overseas as it means you would pay no roaming charges when people call you, but would receive any voicemails (and notification of missed calls which do not leave a voicemail) either via your phone or email. You can then screen these and respond using the most cost effective method eg skype, local sim etc.
2. Whilst the service says you need a smartphone, I cant see any reason why you actually need one. It looks like you should be able to set it up using a cheap PAYG SIM which you set up to divert to your email, so you receive your answerphone messages any time you have access to email. This would enable you to have a fixed uk number you can leave people to contact you on, rather than constantly having to try and update them with your local SIM wherever you are.
The only cost you pay for this, provided you have an unconditional divert set up, is a uk land line call for the time that the person is leaving you the message, so a PAYG SIM with £5-10 should last for ages. If you have a conditional divert you would end up paying a roaming charge which would clearly be far more expensive.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has looked at or tried this approach, or anything similar? I have been using Hullomail for the last few weeks with good results, although so far only in the UK and with an iPhone.
Neil