With the old answering machines, there really wasn’t much flexibility. You could listen to your messages and then go on to the next one. Interesting, huh? Sure, there are still answering machines around but most people don’t use them anymore.

Next we have the dawn of voice mail. Instead of having a machine hooked directly to the phone or line we have an answering service, remotely hosted, offering a bit more flexibility to our telephone messaging lives. Still, there is something static about it. Plus, you usually have to call in to retrieve those messages adding another annoying step.

Google Voice, and specifically Google voicemail, seems to be changing things again. They’re beginning to change what we should be expecting from our phone services and voice mail is definitely not excluded!  Let’s go through some of the features the  Google Voice voicemail system affords our voice mail needs.

First of all, you can get email notifications when you receive a message.

That means that those of us who practically live in the confines of our email in-box will know exactly when a new message is left!  Apparently “more than 30 percent of voice mail messages remain unheard for three days or longer” which tells me that the current way of being notified may be out dated.  Why not bring the notifications to where we are?  Google Voice comes through here!

Second, you can listen to the message online!

When you get the email notification, you can click through and immediately listen to the message. This means that rewinding and fast-forwarding is a cinch. In fact, you can jump straight to the needed part of the message!

Third, Google voicemail will transcribe the message for you into the email message!

That means that Google will use their powers to automatically figure out what the message is saying and type out the words for you (in case you can’t listen to it audibly at that moment). Please note that this feature is not yet perfected (as you can see by the transcriptions at the bottom of my review post) but perhaps through time it will improve.

Forth, Google voicemail allows sharing the message with others

Ever get a a really funny message from one of your buds and you have to pass it on to all your friends? Emailing it to your group is a snap! Or you can embed it in a post on your blog or social network for the world to hear!  OR there’s the download option. You can download the message to an MP3 for playing back or archiving on a CD with the rest of the hundreds of hilarious messages you receive.

Google Voice has brought many features to the telephony table and these new voice mail features are only a portion of what they have to offer.  With Google Voice you can also accomplish such feats as call-forwarding, conference calling, changing phones in the middle of a call, listening in on your Google voicemail, and even calling out while leaving your Google number on caller IDs (use the call out feature to save money on your cell phone bill WITHOUT a data plan). There’s so much more, you’d just have to check it out yourself.

Which features of Google Voice are you most enthralled with?

My initial excitement about Voice quickly faded when I learned that Google Voice will not let you port over your home number yet – although you can use your mobile number, but you’ll be limited to primarily only using the voicemail feature. As I’ve been waiting patiently for Google to offer home number porting (which Google’s help page promises is a feature that’s “coming soon”), I’ve noticed that more cool features keep getting added on to the service, so I thought it’s about time for a list of 5 cool things that you can do with Google Voice.

1. Integrate Google Voice for All Mobile Calls

Obviously, once you sign up with Google Voice, you’ll want to install the mobile app onto your phone. Google Voice offers integrated mobile apps for all major phones, including Android, Blackberry, iPhone and others. Once you install Voice on your phone, you can check your voicemail, send and receive calls, and check your current account balance (Internet and data plan needed for account connection).

Most importantly, once you’ve installed the Google Voice app, you can receive calls on your mobile phone from your Google number. You can also dial out from your cell phone using the app, and people will see your Google Voice number, not your cell phone number.

Just click on “Call with Google Voice,” and your call will get routed through your Voice account. Why is this useful? Imagine you’re starting a new business and you’d like a unique number that you can route to different phones depending on who’s calling. Create one group of contacts that rings your phone, a second group that rings your mobile, and so on.

2. Listen In to Your Voicemail

Remember the days when you had a voice message recorder, and when a caller would start leaving a message, you would also hear the voice from the speaker? With the advent of digital voicemail, that ability to screen calls by listening to the beginning of the message is a disappearing luxury. Well, Google brings it back by integrating ListenIn (TM) service into Google Voice. The way it works is really simple. First, in your Voice account, make sure that under “Call” settings, “Call Presentation” is enabled.

This tells the system that when someone calls you, you’d like to have the option to handle the call in a variety of ways. You can press (1) to immediately accept, (2) to immediately send to voicemail while listening in and pressing (*) if you want to jump into the call.

3. Automatic Transcription of Every Voicemail

While the bugs aren’t quite all worked out of the system yet, the transcription feature works well enough that you can pretty much understand what the person was saying. In the following text call, I used the “listen in” feature, and from the calling-in phone I left a message that went, “This is a test voicemail for a MakeUseOf article.” You can check your voicemails either online or from your phone.

As you can see, the first half of the sentence was transcribed perfectly. The second had “14″ instead of “for a”, but “Make Use of” is understandable and close enough. “Our call” was an obvious near miss of “article,” however you can see that those two words are grayed out because the system had a hard time recognizing those words.

4. Recording Phone Calls

Make sure it’s legal where you live, but another option when you have an incoming call is to press (1) and (4) to accept the call and record it. Yup, record it – which brings me to the next cool Google Voice feature, recording phone calls for interviews, police interrogations, or simply to have a record of the conversation.

There’s no transcription available for recorded conversations, so you’ll need to log into your Voice account to play back the conversation. You can email the file to someone, download it as an MP3 file, or embed it into a website.

5. Customizing Greetings and Other Group Settings

As I mentioned earlier, one of the coolest features of Voice that makes the system ultra-flexible is the fact that you can customize how Google handles and routes your phone calls. It essentially acts as a personal secretary – a phone switchboard that can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

Under “Settings” and “Groups”, you can create any group that you like, and edit individual settings as shown above. Select what phone (or phones) should ring, select (or record) a special greeting, and you can even disable Call Presentation for a particular group so that the call immediately starts when you pick up, rather than offering you the usual options to forward to voicemail.

The real promise of Google Voice is home phone number portability – the potential for doing away with our dependency on the phone company or the cable company for overpriced phone service. Why pay a monthly fee, when you could have your home phone number ported over to Google Voice, and manage how incoming calls are routed (to individual family cellphones, or to work phones) depending on who’s calling?

While the voicemail feature is extremely useful and versatile, the potential of home phone portability, which Google promises in the near future, could completely transform the playing field in the telecommunications industry and revolutionize home telephone service as we know it, or it could fall flat on its face and go down as one of Google’s most significant failed initiatives to date. It will be fascinating to see if Google can manage to make this baby fly.

Well, seek no further! We have a limited amount of invites to give away, so read on to find out more about Google Voice, and how to get your hands on an invite!

How Does Google Voice Work?

Google Voice is Google’s telecommunications service launched just this year. It is currently only available to the U.S., but I won’t be surprised to see it go worldwide eventually. You can use certain features with your existing phone number(s), or set up your own Google Voice number for free and have access to even more great features!

Use Google Voice with your Existing Phone Number

Most people, including myself, already use a well-established phone number and have no desire to change it. Luckily for us, Google offers certain features for use with an existing number, like Google Voicemail, voicemail transcription, the ability to share, download and embed voicemails, international calling at a highly discounted rate, custom greetings that can vary by caller, and more! Unfortunately, porting existing numbers is not yet available, although most everyone is requesting it from Google via their feedback forums.

Google Voicemail uses a platform that looks very similar to the Gmail inbox, which is nice for those who are already familiar with Gmail. Set up custom voicemail greetings for different callers or groups, or have one main greeting for everyone. When someone leaves you a message, Google Voice can automatically transcribe it and send it to you via email or SMS. You can also play the voicemail, or forward it to other people, embed it in a webpage, or download it to your hard drive!

The transcription service works pretty well, too. At the very least, it will give you a good idea of what the caller wants. Of course, you’ll have certain people in your life that Google Voice just can’t transcribe, like people with strong accents, or in my case, my grandfather. Although you might think this would be annoying, I actually find myself looking forward to his voicemails now, thanks to the occasional hilarity of the transcription. Sometimes it will simply say “Transcript Not Available,” or it will transcribe it with some text in gray, indicating those words may not be accurate.

The international calling feature is also a big plus. You can view the discounted rates from your Google Voice interface, and add calling credits from there as well. Calls to Canada are free, whereas other places like France, Italy, Germany and Hong Kong (to name a few) only cost $0.02 per minute!

In addition to the main Help Forum, Google has provided a playlist of helpful videos outlining the services available to you when using Google Voice with your existing phone number.

Choose a Custom Phone Number for More Great Features

You can also set up your own Google Voice phone number to use with additional features like ringing a call to all of your phones, call blocking, the ability to record calls, free SMS services, call screening, the ability to move a call from cell phone to land line and vice versa, and more.

When choosing your Google Voice number, you have total freedom regarding what phone number you end up with. As long as it’s available in the database, it’s as good as yours!

With this number comes many additional features, like the ability to ring all of your phones, or only some of your phones, based on the caller. For example, you could have your wife’s calls ring to your home, cell and work phones, while your boss’s calls ring only to your work phone. You also have the ability to switch from land line to cell phone and vice-versa, while in the middle of a call, without having to hang up.

The call screening feature is another favorite of many users. You can set it up to ask unknown callers to state their name before deciding whether to take the call or send it to voicemail. You can even listen to voicemails as they’re being recorded and choose to take the call right then, or leave it to voicemail. If you have an annoying caller that just won’t leave you alone, you can elect to block the caller, and Google will play the standard “The number you have dialed is no longer in service” message next time a call comes in from that number.

Another great option is the ability to record incoming calls. Beware, though, that the caller will be alerted when you start and stop recording, so there’s no easy way to record secretly! The recording will be stored in your Google Voice account, and from there, you can email, embed or download it.

Google also published a playlist showcasing these features, along with a few others, for use with your Google Voice number.

Want an Invite?

We have 100 invites to give away to 100 lucky readers, so be sure to request your invitation now, as I’m sure they will go quickly! UPDATE : We have no more invites!

To request an invite, simply send an email to april+voiceinvites@makeuseof.com with the email address you’d like the invitation sent to in the body of the message.

Double check that the email address you provide is accurate! Google will be responsible for sending the invitations, so please note that I have no control over when you will receive it. When we run out of invites, we will announce it here.

Editor’s note: Please do not submit any requests in the comments. We will only entertain invitation requests sent via email to the specified address above.

If you missed out on this particular opportunity, you can still request an invite directly from Google by visiting their Request an Invite page. When I requested mine back in August, it took about a month to receive it, which was actually sooner than I expected, so don’t worry! They say they are working through them as quickly as they can.

Here are a few similar phone-related services we’ve reviewed in the past:

10 Sites to Send Free Text Messages to Cell Phones (SMS)
15 Free Useful Services to Access from Your Phone
Phonevite – Blast Out Voice Messages to Your Team for Free
PrivatePhone: FreePrivate Phone Number
MessageSling: Store & Manage Your Voicemail Messages Online

Do you know of any unique ways to utilize Google Voice?  Let us know in the comments!

How to Set Up a Voicemail Feature For Your Blog

VoiceMeMe provides you with an innovative approach to interacting with your website visitors. I’m always looking for new ways to provide a way for my blog visitors to interact with me, similar to the LiveZilla online tech support system I recently wrote about. While the LiveZilla tech support system was great for my writing and online SEO blog, for my other blog about alleged top secret government programs, I need an easy tool that allows visitors to click through and leave me a message in a way that’s both convenient and completely anonymous for the visitor.

With VoiceMeMe, you can provide such a tool to your blog visitors, where they can simply click on the tool to retrieve a phone number and a pin number that’s customized specifically for their message. They call the number from any phone, enter the pin, leave their message and you are immediately alerted to the voicemail, which you can chose to listen to from the VoiceMeMe website or download the file directly to your computer. To set up the voicemail widget, just visit the widget page on Widgetbox.

The widget is actually pretty well designed and would look good on any blog. However, if you don’t like how it looks, you can configure it in the settings box to the right on the same page.

The most important field to set up a voicemail account properly is the email field. Make sure to type in the email address where you want your voicemail notifications to go. You can also set up the message that initially appears in the widget on your blog, and the final message that the user sees after they’ve left their message.

Once you click “Get Widget,” you’re provided with the embed code. You can choose from Javascript, Flash or MySpace code. If you’re unsure what you need to use, scroll through the specific applications at the bottom – if your blog is in Blogger or WordPress, click on those icons and you’ll get the embed code that will work for you, or Widgetbox may insert it for you once you enter your credentials. In my case, I just copy and paste it into my WordPress widget for my TopSecretWriters blog, and this is how the widget appears in the sidebar on my blog.

Whenever a visitor comes to my blog, and if that visitor is possibly some insider with secret knowledge about how much the government really knows about aliens, they could anonymously share that information with me by clicking on the “Next” button inside the widget. When they do so, the widget produces a one-time pin number and then provides the visitor with the number they can call to leave me a message.

This is a one time pin, and the caller can call from any phone that they like, meaning that when the Men In Black come knocking on doors, there’s no trace left and no one to point any fingers at. This widget allows your blog visitors to feel like they’re having a  much more interactive experience with your blog because they can take part. Being able to contact a blog owner directly like this is not always easy on many blogs, so by offering this feature you’re providing a very unique service for your loyal visitors. The coolest thing about this widget is that it actually updates while the call is in progress. When the caller dials the number and is leaving you a message, the widget displays the following on their computer screen.

This assures the caller that they really are leaving a message for the blog that they visited and that the blog owner (you) will receive the message. Once they hang up the phone, the widget updates with the customized message you defined when you set it up.

Save the embed code that you created, because you can use this service on Facebook, in your HTML-based emails, and even on forum posts or on your various online profiles. Wherever you want to offer website visitors an opportunity to leave you a voice message instantly, you can embed this widget.

When I tested the service through my own blog, it was instantaneous, and I love the fact that you can download and save the voicemail message on your local hard drive if you like. The service takes less than five minutes to set up through WidgetBox, it requires no sign up or registration, and of course it’s absolutely free. Just one more very cool way to set up a voicemail feature on your website or blog that your visitors will love.

Would you consider setting up a voicemail widget on your blog? Can you think of any other cool uses for this voicemail widget? Share your insight in the comments section below.

]]> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/set-up-a-voicemail-system-for-your-blog-with-voicememe/feed/ 7 http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-best-sites-to-download-free-funny-voicemail-messages/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-best-sites-to-download-free-funny-voicemail-messages/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:01:43 +0000 Karl L. Gechlik http://www.makeuseof.com/?p=28396 Does anyone still remember the answering machine? You know the thing that your 800 voicemails have made obsolete? Maybe your parents still have one. They have a flashing red number on them and they always broke down.

The thing that I remember and loved about answering machines were that you could buy pre-recorded messages on cassette tapes so that your callers could hear this before leaving you a message.

Nowadays we all have voicemails so how can we do the same thing? Do you want Captain Picard telling your callers that you are not at home (don’t worry we won’t judge you ““ yes we will!!) then you need to head on over to one of these three ancient sites, play the recording back via your speakers and hold your cell phone up to the speakers as you are recording your message!

This will work for any sound emitted from your machine so you can use this trick with any audio files and not just the ones from these old school sites. Many of the ones that I remember from way back when are very down.

The first one up for funny voicemail messages is Audio Comedy’s site available here

Not only do they have real answering machine messages but they also have other audio files like song parodies and stand up comedians. They also have sound boards to have fun with sounds. You can play just the parts you want and use that as your voicemail.

The comedians they have available are: Carlos Mencia, Chris Rock, Daniel Tosh, George Carlin, George Lopez, Jeff Foxworthy, Kevin Meaney, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Pablo Fransisco, Robin Williams, Stephen Lynch and Jim Breuer. If this is up your alley you can also do this with video clips via YouTube.

You can see a glimpse of their sound boards below (I love the Eric Cartman one!- call me and see )

The next site up for funny voicemail messages is via AhaJokes and can be found here. This site has lots of funny audio links but the descriptions are non-existent. So unless you have lots of time to kill, this will probably make you mad. But I have found some gems on here that I have never heard before. So go exploring and enjoy!

The categories that they have are as follows: Machine Related, Authority related, Odd organizations, Musical theme, Fun with the family, Why can’t you answer it?, You are in big trouble now, Confuse or stun the caller, Science fiction and Other. Click on them play them and laugh! Let us know which are your favorites!

The last site is via Silly Humor and can be found here

This site does not have a lot of recordings but the quality of them make up for it! I listened to every one on this site! You can have Spock, Picard or even Humphrey Bogart answer your phone! People might snicker or call you a dork but who cares?

Don’t worry, one day some one will leave you a message!

Which sites do you like that offer funny voicemail messages? Let us know in the comments!

At its simplest, drop.io is a place to store files on the Internet. You create “drops” filled with files, photos, audio, video and more that you can share with other people. There’s a 100MB limit on a given drop, but you can purchase more space if you want. Typically, though, 100MB is plenty- that’s an awful lot of PDFs and Word documents.

Every drop has a 7+ character name, and can be accessed, shared, and dealt with however you want. You can set the drop to be password protected, and even edit it later from your own account. Drops aren’t searchable, which means you’ll maintain the privacy of your files, and they’ll only be seen by the people who are supposed to see them.

In addition to all that, though, there are a ton more features that make drop.io unique. The feature list is gigantic, and there are a ton of features to make drops work for you. Here are eight ways to use drop.io to do more than just hold files.

1. Phone Drops and Drop Conferencing

For a long time, I used Jott to record all my random whims and thoughts – just call a number, record your message, and it gets saved for you. Then Jott got un-free. With drop.io, you can do the same thing Jott used to do. Every drop has a unique phone number- just call it, leave a message, and it’ll show up in your drop as an MP3 that you can listen to, download, or send to others. There’s also no time limit on your voicemails, like there was with Jott- your only limitation is the file size limit of the MP3.

Drop.io is also a really useful collaboration tool, both for file-sharing and discussing. Every drop, in addition to a voicemail number, has a unique conference number that you can give to people to call. Get everyone on the line, and you can discuss the files in the drop, manipulate them, and use drop.io as your project center. It’s free conferencing, and creates a central point for all of your dealings with a particular file or project.

2. Drop Tweeting

One drawback many people see in Twitter is that there’s no good way to share files with your followers on Twitter. Drop.io makes that process not only possible, but simple. Drop.io calls it Tweet.io, and it works like this: you enter your Twitter credentials into the drop.io page. Then, every time you add or update a file on the drop, a link to it will automatically be posted to your Twitter account. That means, for instance, that if you want to share a song with the Twitter world, just add it to your drop, and Twitter users will be able to listen to it with one click. To get here, select “Twitter Alerts” from the “Share” menu in your drop.

3. Back-up Space

This is possibly the simplest use for drop.io. You can add files to a drop by email (every drop has a unique email address), voicemail, fax, the web interface, a Firefox extension, or an embeddable widget. You’ve got 100MB per drop, with no limit on the number of drops you can have. To make them totally private, make sure to make them password-protected. Then, to keep them limited only to yourself, keep that password private. The number of drops you have could get big, though, so you may not want drop.io to be your only backup solution.

4. Drop Fax Machine

I don’t have a fax machine. I don’t need one very often, but every once in a while it’s a really useful thing to have. With drop.io fax, you can send and receive faxes right from the web. Just right-click on the file you want to send, and choose “fax”. Then, enter the number, and presto – they get a fax. To receive one is a bit more complicated, but totally possible – just follow drop.io’s instructions.

5. Drop Huge Attachments

Even if you use drop.io, odds are it might be too much for someone you know. For them, if they use email, you can still keep them involved. Emailing files out of drop.io is as simple as finding your file, clicking “send,” and then “email recipient.” They’ll get the file as an attachment, plus the link- which makes sure that they’ll get access to files of any size. It’s great for sending music, videos, or other large files you might not be able to send through email- but still dealing with email, which everyone’s comfortable with.

6. Drop to Facebook

Thanks to Facebook Connect, drop.io and Facebook are now totally connected. That means a number of really cool things: you can leave a voicemail to your Facebook feed for your friends to listen to, or fax things to your Facebook friends. With drop.io, Facebook has become a way to socially collaborate on files, and to share things you like with other people. No linking to download sites, making them download software, or other confusion- just fire up Facebook Connect, and your drops can be as involved with Facebook as you want. For more, check out drop.io’s Facebook page.

7. Drop Family Photo Albums

Drop.io’s support for photos is pretty fantastic. The viewer is good, the uploading quick, and the use of the drops easy. It’s as simple as uploading the images you want, and selecting “View” from the options. The view option (blog, media, etc.) you choose is up to you. Then, click on one of the images, and select the arrows to scroll through them. You can also share, embed, or comment on any given image.

8. Drop Insta-podcast

I’ve mentioned all of the things relevant here, but this is worth noting again. Here’s how simple it can be to make a podcast: one phone call. Call your drop’s number, leave a message, and boom- podcast. Or, upload a video, view it like a blog, and it’s a weekly podcast. How you create a podcast is up to you, but sharing it with the world couldn’t be easier- thanks to drop.io.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here of all the things drop.io can do. There are RSS feeds, SMS alerts, Dropcasts, and a huge number of other features that make drop.io a killer sharing application. I’ve learned a lot about it as I’ve been researching and writing this post, and I’m pretty sure I’ve become a life convert to drop.io.

Do you use drop.io, for backup or something else? Do you use a similar application? Tell us about them in the comments.

One app I like in particular is called Palringo (iTunes Link). The major difference between Palringo and other IM clients for the iPhone is that it is a multi-protocol client. That means you cannot only use your AIM account, but also your Yahoo!, Windows Live, and Google Talk accounts (and more, seen on the right). Palringo isn’t the only multi-protocol client, but compared to the other few I have seen thus far, it is definitely the most refined.

Another great feature is the interface. While Palringo is a multi-platform client (meaning it can run on multiple types of machines), this review will only cover the iPhone’s specific interface. To be brief: it’s great! It is not a simple “port” or recreation of the original interface (though it is somewhat similar). Instead, it was designed with the device in mind.

At the top of the screen there are three central buttons that let you switch between your accounts, your chat groups, and your contacts. The “accounts” pane is where account configuration takes place. The “chat groups” pane allows you to create chat rooms where multiple users can interact. The last pane, the “contacts” pane, is the most important. It lists all the people from your various buddy lists on one unified list. Unfortunately there are no “groups” like in other chat clients. Available users are listed at the top and offline users are shown below. There is a handy search box at the top to prevent massive scrolling, though.

Clicking any contact, as expected, brings up a new chat window. In the chat pane there are several options. The first is a simple chat window that brings up the keyboard. One critique here is that the text is very small and makes typing pretty difficult. The other options include sending an image, adding the other user as a contact, or sending a voice message.

The last option is one of the coolest things about Palringo. If you click the word-bubble icon, the App brings up a bar for you to hold down with your finger. While you’re holding it down, the iPhone’s mic turns on and records a short message. After you let go, it will immediately stop recording and send your message. In Palringo, the message shows as a “play” button, but your friend will likely see a link. After testing it a number of times, I can say that this feature works well, but sometimes it can cut off the last bit of your sentence unexpectedly.

Another neat feature is the ability to move in 4 directions through the interface. When scanning your buddy list, a standard up or down flick will scroll through it. If you have multiple chat windows open, though, flicking left or right (like in the iPhone’s picture viewer) will change from one chat window to another. It takes some getting used to because the difference between the motions is very slight for the first centimeter or so. Once you understand how Palringo responds, though, the convenience of the left-right flick more than makes up for any accidental scrolling.

There are more features in Palringo, but hopefully you get the gist of the app. It has some of the limitations inherent to all 3rd party apps. For instance, because the iPhone won’t run background processes, going to the home screen closes Palringo and signs you off. There is no logging feature (which I believe is possible under the iPhone SDK) so any chats you had before closing the app are lost. Even so, the client passes all of my general benchmarks for a good IM client and I will definitely use this one for any of my messaging needs.

[rating=3]

What are some of your favorite iPhone IM clients? Does this one do it for you or is there something else out there that’s better?

(By) Jimmy Rogers is a biology major at George Mason University and an avid freelance tech blogger. Check out his blog, Mason Tech Beat.

At Make Use Of, we’ve covered a ton of tools to make your Twitter better. From 4 Tools for More Productive Twittering, to other Tools and Apps to Improve your Twitter Experience. All you really have to do to see everything we’ve listed on Twitter is to check out the “Twitter” tag here on the website.

Today, I bring you a new service for Twitter. It’s called TwitterFone. TwitterFone is unique in that it offers users of their free service the ability to send Twitter messages using their voice. Yeah, that’s right…your voice.

Twitter….over the phone?

Yes, that’s right. Tweet to your heart’s content without internet access. Really, all you need to do is call TwitterFone, say what you want to “tweet”, and then hang up. Just a minute or two later, your Twitter page will update. Magic!

How does TwitterFone do this?

TwitterFone transcribes your voice message into text, then posts the message to your Twitter account. It’s free to sign up or the Make Use Of team wouldn’t bother with reviewing it. However when you call up Twitterfone, you are charged the normal cost of a national call in your own country.

They’ve also got numerous numbers in many countries so a lot of Make Use Of readers should be able to use it in their country.

As the name suggests, this service is for Twitter only. This is not some multi-purpose “voice lifestreaming” service.

One thing I hope they improve on is the ability to do Twitter replies and direct messages. Currently, only personal tweets are possible.

Cool, what do I need?

Just a Twitter account, a private beta code, an email address, and a mobile phone fone.

To get setup with the TwitterFone service, you’ll need an invitation code (don’t worry, I’ve secured some so you can register). Once you have that, you’ll register for your account. This is just your basic signup form with fields for your email address, Twitter info, and your mobile number. For security’s sake, they’ll send you a text message with another code in it and this must be entered for the service to enable. After that, you’re ready to tweet using your mobile phone.

Once you’ve tested the TwitterFone service, you’ll see something akin to this. You’ll see by the tweet here on the right, its not perfect. But it has gotten all of my words correct.

Invitation Codes

If you’d like an invitation code to join TwitterFone, please fill out the form below and I’ll send you one. Once they’re all gone, I’ll remove this form.

Update: Unfortunately, TwitterFone invites are all gone. But not all is lost. You can request one here.

So if you’ve used Twitterfone, what do you think about it? Let us know in the comments.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.