Recently I learned about a new service that lets you customize your voicemail past anything of that the cell phone companies have allowed in the past. The service, YouMail, which began in 2007, has some excellent features not included by our cell phone carriers.

For starters, one of the main features is visual voicemail, which is most popular from being implemented on the Apple iPhone. Visual voicemail lets you listed to your messages as you want, rather than having to listen to each message until you get to the one you want.

My favorite feature of YouMail is the ability to select a custom voicemail for each contact. I have personalized messages for my wife, friends and family, but have my business greeting for my co-workers. I keep telling others how great this tool would be for salespeople, being able to personally greet each customer, rather than using the generic voicemail, for that personal touch. My brother-in-law, a former Marine, has a nice military greeting, while my dad has one that emulates Dell tech support. In addition to this, there are plenty of "ditchmail" greetings, so if you have an annoying person or telemarketer calling you, you can give their number an error or out of service message to not deal with them.

By default, YouMail assigns a "smart greeting" to contacts, which personalizes the message according to their name. The features don't end here however. You can have a voicemail to text service, which is useful for those in meetings who don't want to rudely disturb others to get up and check messages. In addition, there is an expanded Caller ID system in place. While I may receive a call from a number that isn't familiar, when I look at my missed calls or voicemails on YouMail, it will more often than not, show the company name, if not unlisted.

I have YouMail set up very simply - As I have a BlackBerry with unlimited data, I simply receive an email on my device whenever there is a voicemail for me. I can choose which messages to listen to via the visual voicemail on my phone's browser, can listen the old fashioned way, or can even listen to the messages on my PC via the YouMail website. That option is the best for those who like to save everything, as each voicemail can be saved in MP3 form for later playback.

YouMail is available for most phones and carriers in North America. I highly recommend checking it out - you won't be disappointed.

Hat tip to Neowin...

Google has released the very first beta of their new web browser, Google Chrome. Chrome is a browser that, for now at least, is focused on offering a full browsing experience within a minimalistic user interface. To skip past the P.R. phrasing, Google Chrome is designed to be simple to use without sacrificing any of the features required for daily web browsing. To get a little more in depth, Google Chrome uses the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari browser, named Webkit. In recent history, the developers of Webkit have made great strides in creating what is, as of today, the fastest browser engine in terms of rendering speed. Google Chrome, currently version 0.2.149.27, seems to use a slightly older build of Webkit (version 525.13, to be precise), however, so some of the recent Webkit development gains will not have made it into the first release of the browser. Other features of Chrome include a dynamic tab system which allows you to drag and drop tabs inside and outside of the browser window, an "incognito mode" in which the sites you visit are not added to your browsing history, and a feature similar to Opera's Speed Dial, in which you are presented with your nine most visited websites, in thumbnail form, when opening a new tab. If you wish to give Google Chrome a try, click the download link below. It's an early beta, though, so don't expect it to be perfect.

Link: Google Chrome Screenshot: View I've actually posted this entry via Google Chrome and find it to be decent for a beta (although isn't everything Google does always in beta?) but it misses some key things like the Firefox extensions such as AdBlock Plus...

I'm currently testing a new tablet PC for my work (first thoughts - it's freaking awesome, although how could they NOT include OneNote? That's basically *the* program to have for a tablet...) and saw that Microsoft had a tool to analyze handwriting. Here's my handwriting sample:

Now, here is the analysis provided...

Handwriting Analysis Tool for Tablet PC Results Attitude You are optimistic and enthusiastic about your future. You are impatient and may consequentially ignore details. You enjoy physical and hands-on activities. Mental Abilty You rely heavily on intuition, and make decisions carefully. Communication You keep your inner-most thoughts to yourself. However, you enjoy discussions and are receptive to other opinions. You can be deceitful to yourself. Goals You set ambitious, long term goals, though sometimes vague. Fortunately, you have strong will-power, enthusiasm, endurance, and self-confidence, helping you to achieve those goals. Self Image You are confident and self-assured, and resultantly set ambitious, long-term goals. However, you are also sensitive to criticism and need approval. Emotional You are a cautious person who thinks carefully before acting. You keep feelings inside and do not express them openly, in order to protect yourself. However, you can be empathetic and sympathetic, and forgive and forget quickly. Social Skills You enjoy having a variety of friends, but sometimes you are frustrated with them. At times you feel isolated.

I thought it was pretty accurate...anyone else with a tablet try this?

My wife's Treo 650 has been through a war it seems like. She has been nagging me for the longest time to get a replacement since the phone is constantly dropping calls. Unfortunately, I'm a cheapskate and the 2-year contract wasn't up, so I didn't want to pay an ETF. Not to mention that I've got her phone on the wonderful SERO plan: 500 anytime minutes, free night and weekends, unlimited data etc... for $30/month with a 20+% corporate discount applied on top of that. Once her contract expired, she was still complaining, but we didn't see any phones that she wanted. Finally we found the Samsung Instinct and were very impressed until we realized that we'd have to change the plan to one of the Simply Everything plans, which were at minimum, twice the price of her current one. Well, the Treo 800W just came out and after doing some research decided that it would be the next phone to get for her. It has everything she needs or was used to on her Treo 650, and then some extra features she didn't have that would be useful, like wi-fi. After some price shopping, it appears I could buy the phone from Sprint for $250 after mail in rebate. Best Buy however has the phone for $190 with no rebates. Because of her SERO plan, I called up customer service and attempted to haggle. The representative I worked with seemed to have English as a second language, so negotiating and explaining things were a bit harder than anticipated. At first, he tried to float the corporate line of how I won't know if the phone from Best Buy was new or used, and that I wouldn't have the same level of support if I purchased it from him. I'm not sure if having to explain to him that Best Buy was not a fly-by-night company and that the $40 billion they made in revenue was nearly identical to that of Sprint. In any event, after some bartering, he offered a $50 instant discount, lowering the price to $200. Again, he was baffled when I didn't accept the offer on the spot, instead informing him that $200 was still more than that of $190. So, without hesitation, he brought on someone from the sales team to see what could be done (It should be noted that I wouldn't have even tried to have the price matched to Best Buy if it wasn't for reading that many others had done the same thing.) When the lady from sales looked into my account, she noticed I had a corporate discount and was then able to give an additional $50 discount from the corporate side. I happen to know that there are various $50 promotion codes and simply think she was looking for any that would be appropriate, although I could be way off. In any event, this knocked the price to $150 (after $100 rebate) but still cheaper than Best Buy. I bit on the deal, but then was on hold for at least 45 minutes while she straightened things out. Eventually everything was set, the phone was ordered and I had verified that my current plan would not be changed on multiple occasions and also that I was given a 30 day trial, since the whole reason for upgrading was to determine if our house was causing the dropped Sprint calls, or if it was her aged Treo 650. Fingers crossed, we'll have the new phone in 3-4 business days, it will activate and work flawlessly. Unfortunately I'm too much of a realist to believe this will happen. After reading more, it appears that other users in this situation have been told that they are unable to upgrade because their current plan is incompatible with the newer PDA phones, even though the SERO plan originally included all of this. So, now it is a waiting game to see what happens. Either the phone works out of the box and I'm happy and remain a Sprint customer, or some other things come into play. The first, if the plan is incompatible, is to have customer service make it compatible without trying to nickel and dime me for a higher end plan. If the service isn't up to par, then I can either walk away in the first 30 days, or try to see if they will give me a free Sprint Airave, which is essentially a cell phone repeater for sprint that hooks up like a wireless router to an existing high speed internet connection. The Airave has supposedly been given out to quite a few folks with poor coverage in their home. Finally, while I don't think it will get this far, my last option is to ditch Sprint, and then go to AT&T for an iPhone 3G. The cheapest plan offered with the iPhone is $70, but I can also use a corporate discount there from what I understand. Here's hoping everything goes smooth. I'll keep this updated as information changes.