Philip Haine's articles on Product Vision, Innovation and Design

Web-based visual voicemail

Philip Haine

Why shouldn’t we be able to access our voicemail from a web browser? Or our email clients?

Speaking of mobile phones…

Apple already got AT&T to do the work to support visual voicemail. This is a good thing for users, since it’s much faster to be able to use one’s eyes to navigate interfaces than only one’s ears.

But why must voicemail be accessible only from your cellphone? Users already have a web login for their cellphone accounts. Why not allow users to access voicemail through a web interface? Then you could skim the messages, type text message responses from the browser or even initiate a callback from the far more efficient UI of your computer. (The callback would call your cellphone then the other party’s.)

While we’re at it, why not have an IMAP connector to your voicemail? You could then process voice messages as you process your email. The only difference is when you open the email message there would be a voice attachment to play. Since it’s using the glorious magic of IMAP, messages you read or delete are kept in sync with the server and your mobile phone, so your phone doesn’t nag you with a message you already processed. (Office VoIP PBX phone systems have permitted these scenarios for years, and they are great.)

By the same token: It’s been two years since I wrote about how cellphone configuration would be better done with a web interface. Is anyone doing this yet?

Posted by Philip Haine on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 5:30 pm.
See similar articles in: Commentary, Product Vision & Strategy, Quick Ideas, Visions to Steal.

4 Responses to “Web-based visual voicemail”

  1. dcreemer wrote on January 29th, 2008 at 9:34 pm :

    OK, now I *know* you’re astroturfing for GrandCentral…

  2. dcreemer wrote on January 29th, 2008 at 9:37 pm :

    Oh, and wth regards to your last question (web configuration of a mobile phone), I think the answer is “almost”. See http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/pcphone

  3. Philip Haine wrote on July 21st, 2009 at 10:44 pm :

    Hooray, Google Voice (hitherto GrandCentral as dcreemer pointed out) has browser-based voicemail. I swear I didn’t know it at the time.

    [PS: Google, you can send the check to my PO Box]

  4. Philip Haine wrote on March 23rd, 2010 at 9:54 am :

    And of course for several months Google Voice (which is what GrandCentral became) now has automatic transcription of voicemail. Even more visual than visual voicemail!

    I love it when a great solution is trumped by an even greater solution.

    (Another example of this is when Graffiti trumped handwriting recognition, then the RIM Blackberry thumb keyboard trumped Graffiti. The Apple onscreen keyboard was decidedly a step backwards, although its auto-correct smarts are sweet.)

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