Enhance your mobile's voicemail (and a bonus for BlackBerry users): Youmail

Youmail
http://www.youmail.com/

Cell phone voicemail is a pretty standard thing. You receive a call. Maybe you don't pick it up or can't get to the phone, and just let it go to voicemail. Later on you might get a few more calls and subsequently, a few more voicemails.

With the standard voicemail for cellular users, a person would dial up their voicemail, listen to each message (or at least skip through the ones they don't want to listen to) - i.e. in a linear fashion...you can't easily know who left you a voicemail, nor can you easily skip to the ones that are most important to you.

If you've recently purchased a Verizon phone within the last year or so, you've probably noticed the Verizon Visual Voicemail application, which allows you to listen to the voicemail you want in the order you want. Not only that, but you get a visual identifier letting you know who left that voicemail, and at what time.

image courtesy of BoyGenius Report

Nice, but you need to pay a $2.99 fee per month (which I admit is not too bad). But...now you don't have to pay that fee if you sign up for Youmail.

Youmail is an online voicemail service that allows you to have your own visual voicemail - all through an email, SMS or an online interface.

an example of an email notification

To set up Youmail, you go to their website, follow the onscreen instructions, and by the time you are finished, you should be able to call your cell-phone, have it forward to Youmail's services and get a voicemail notifier via SMS or email (and also reprogram your phone to dial Youmail's number from your VM shortcut key via telephone if you don't have a data plan for your phone).

What you can do with Youmail:

• Visual voicemail via phone (SMS), email, or online
• Custom greetings for your callers
• Voicemail filtering (got a harrassing caller, don't give them the opportunity to leave voicemail!)
• Voice-to-text (paid option)
• Show missed callers (even if they don't leave a message)
• Import your contacts from gmail, yahoo or an imported contacts file (csv)
  

I have to say, setting up Youmail was extremely easy, you just need to make sure you follow all the instructions (Dave!).

One thing I really liked was the ability to send a voicemail easily to an email recipient...making it even easier to make fun of that misunderstood or confused message that someone left you.

Also, Youmail gives you the ability to share and embed your favorite voicemails onto a web page (although I'm not sure why I would do that...maybe some of you have crazier friends than I do).'

I sent this site on to my boss, and he uses U.S. Cellular as his provider. He stated his number wasn't supported, although I did not see any information stating there was a carrier limitation...it could be possible that your service may not work. Let us know in the comments!

The only downside:

If you don't have SMS texting or a data plan (to receive email notifications) on your phone, then there is no real way to be notified on your device that you have a new voicemail. So, if this is the case, then Youmail probably isn't for you.

Also, if you have a limited texting plan, be aware you will be charged for each notifcation per your carrier's billing plan. Thankfully, you can opt out of the text messages and get just email notifications.

A bonus for BlackBerry users:

If you have a BlackBerry as I do - you can install a custom built application (much like the Verizon Visual Voicemail app, although not as flashy) called 'VyMail' by Joe Krill. He says it is in 'very early beta stages', but I've not had any real problem with it, other than it does not yet support speaker phone...i.e. you have to listen to the messages from the handset speaker (this issue is with the Storm only).

Website: http://www.joekrill.com/vymail/
OTA link: http://www.joekrill.com/vymail/ota/