Michael Arrington at Tech Crunch made this amazing post about how Voicemail is dead. Stop using it and welcome to 2008. Here is his post as he posed on Techcrunch.com.
Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it.
When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems – which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, and how many messages could be stored and for how long. Even though email was around, people were still unsure how to use it. Letters went on letterhead and were formal. Voicemail was informal and common. Email etiquette was still being developed. It was good for mass-forwarding jokes and moving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files around, but it took a while for email to take over as older generations moved out of the workplace or got with the program.
But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.
Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.
How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”
Senders often feel guilty for leaving voicemails, too. And to make sure you get the message, quite often people will follow up with a text message – “Just left you a VM, it’s important” – just so you know it’s there.
There are startups that are trying to make voicemail more useful. Pinger, GrandCentral and YouMail are among them. The iPhone’s visual voicemail feature helps clean up the clutter, too. But at the end of the day you still need to take time to listen to those voicemails, and that usually comes after other equally urgent but less disruptive tasks.
The services that really make voicemail more usable are those that convert voicemail into text and then send it to you via email or SMS (Spinvox, PhoneTag Yap and Jott, for example).
More mobile carriers are offering text conversion for a monthly or per-message fee. It’s my guess this will become more and more common. Voice is here to stay as a data input method, but listening to messages will certainly become an increasing luxury, to be reserved for loved ones or those messages that aren’t transcribed properly (or you need to hear it for tone or emotion).
For now most people don’t have voicemail transcription services. So think before you voicemail, more and more people just find it annoying.
My personal site has gone out of date BIG TIME so I finally found a cool and creative way to keep it up to date with little to no maintenance. The image background is a Billionaire Boys Club production I found a long time ago which I enjoy and is my desktop background. I used a Retaggr.com virtual business card which will sync you into many of the sties I am active on such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, Twitter, and many more. You can read a bio on myself and find out information about PM Lifestyle.
I will make this short and sweet and after SEMA I will try to get more on my automotive trak for this blog but lately I have been escaping when I can due to the SEMApocalypse coming next week. So I have been getting a good bit of “heat” from friends and other people for publicly bad mouthing the Atlanta Trashers errr Thrashers. Listen, I am still a fan at heart but it’s so much easier to boo rather than cheer. It was a sure sign to everyone when we lost all of our talent and acquired none that things were coming to a quick end. So I decided to give the game a fair chance and spend my hard earned dollars at the arena tonight. Well we lost 7 to 0. Amazing, the Thrashers suck, possibly worse than the Hawks now……I know, it’s amazing. Maybe we can trade Ilya for six first round draft pics in 2009. If we were really lucky the Atlanta Spirit would just SELL the team already.
With the advent of Internet television comes some casualties of war I guess. Revision 3 is a tech centric online television company run by Jay and Kevin from Digg. They canceled my second favorite show on their online TV network called Popsiren. While the one girl on the show was super strange we will miss the epic hostess that is Sarah Lane. The show will be missed and it sends me a clear message we need better advocates (like myself) to encourage you people to throw away your televisions and cancel your horrid cable/DirecTV/bunny ears. Watch television on the Internet, it could make you rich and probably better looking and if your really lucky more interesting of a person. Sarah Lane did a project tracking her locations she has live in her life which inspired my life project that some of you have seen in Google Maps. Hopefully in the post SEMA world I can get it complete and unveil it on the blog. It’s coming soon, I promise. At least TRS and Diggnation are still on the air. Alright, back to pre SEMA warcamp.
While I need a minute break from SEMA preparations the NASCAR series has rolled into our home here in Atlanta, Georgia for the weekend. I decided to buck the trend of normal NASCAR zealotry and attend the truck race only for the weekend. As all of our NASCAR pals roll into the city for the weekend we are pumped to entertain all our guests here in Atlanta. With the rain pouring down currently at AMS it looks to be a busy weekend at the PM Lifestyle office in the city since no one will have much to do. We are pumped tomorrow to watch Kyle drive his way to another victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway!
In a time when I thought NBC couldn’t do anything correct (Knight Rider) they have managed to do something very cool with the only show on NBC I claim to be a fan of. Tina Fey carries this show and my super crush on her helps me not miss an episode. Who cannot watch this show after Alec Baldwin publically claimed NBC was giving his show the shaft and not promoting it right. If your a 30 Rock fan you need to watch this online and not wait for it on television. Strike this up as a win for Internet TV.
I found this site browsing stumbleupon today and was amazing by some of the cool abandoned locations this site has captured in Detroit. The photograph of the keys are from an old General Motors truck plant that has now been demolished. The second photo is from the old American Hotel in Michigan. Check out the link below to look at these locations more in depth and other areas around Michigan that are empty and forgotten.
First off, a bone stock R8 is my dream ride as it is. This is some amazing photography in what looks to be Miami, Florida of thisTDI LeMans concept. The car is amazing, the extended grill and general look of the car is so aggressive. Great props to the photographer that captured this car in action. Who wants to buy me an Audi R8? We could timeshare it…………
After this accident at HIN Nightshift Phoenix I have been in some debates on forums about the safety of media at events and I must say that some people’s replies have really blown me away. After watching this incident happen at HIN and witnessed other accidents in similar environments I think we need to grow up as a motor sports community already.
As someone who owns a company in the media business and does a ton of work around the automotive industry I just see something lacking in a major way. Don’t misunderstand me for a minute either, we have been to these same HIN demo’s and our crew has filmed them in the same fashion as the people above in this accident video. The link below is a video we made for NOS Energy Drink at Hot Import Nights: Nightshift New York. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/HIN-Nightshift-New-York_167950.htm
Now the shot you see from the Drifting demo seems very harmless because no accident had happened but that was filmed by a friend in film of ours who isn’t exactly an automotive media expert. If something were to of happened, he probably had no idea the danger he could of been in around that area. The other thing is anyone with a general credential can walk right up to that wall at HIN or into a hot zone of Formula D. Especially on the Formula D side I think they need to move into a teered system of media.
There is no reason many of the people cluttering the media pits at these events should be inside the area they are in and it just makes it generally more difficult for people who know what they are doing and have a purpose to get their job done. I have witnessed (especially this season at Formula D) some people just doing very dumb things on a hot track even though Formula D takes many great precautions for the media’s safety. Sadly Formula D cannot babysit everyone in the media section constantly observe them to assure they are not doing irrational things but they have to take the liability. Look at this perfect example from Formula D Long Beach. This kid during qualifying hopped on the k-rail and took photos for several runs until security ran and took him down.
This is the major issue I really see that is going on. When you receive a media pass at HIN, NOPI, BOTI, Formula D, Pro Am or any other organization no one delineates you from a official media partner, 5 year shooting professional, blogger, kid on Flickr, local forum or anything. This is where I think a teer system can help everyone’s headache and safety. I think bloggers and local forums/sites are a key and should never have to pay to enter an event but do they really need to be allowed inside the hot media area? Perhaps we need an approval/vouch system to get into the hot area or you have to attend an event first under a cold pass to understand more of what is going on?
Another main reason that got me motivated to right this post is the events that I witnessed at Irwindale Speedway this year. So Friday I woke up wayy early to attend a mandatory media meeting which was no problem. I was upset but swallowed my pride and rolled into this meeting even though I had to bolt out to LAX right after and then head right back to the track. Well after being told for a good amount of time the basics we left and were told we had to come to the meeting tomorrow. I show up to the next meeting on Saturday which wasn’t as early but seemed as brutal time wise. The basics were like don’t run out on the track, don’t be an idiot, stand here, don’t stand here. Well during the main event what does someone do? They jump right across the k-rail while track is hot. The course worker spots them and they did get yelled at immediately. It’s like really though? What if something happened to the guy? Was he really someone worth having the liability of being in a hot zone of the race track? Hopefully he will not be allowed to return after a brash action like that took place. With all of this being said, I want to hop off my soapbox by saying that most of these concerns I am bringing here because I hope we can get this stuff solved before a fatality is caused in the sport. That I feel would be tragic for all of us in the community. If anyone would wish to contact me I am open to help with any way to improve safety at venues from grassroots to the professional series. Just drop a line through the contact form and I will get back to you.
Man let’s talk about China! Lewis Hamilton launched out of P1 very well and didn’t look back for the whole race. With a very great turn one it looked like McLaren could do no wrong. Sadly Massa finished second placing Hamilton only seven points ahead in the championship. Ironically, Lewis Hamilton entered the last round last year seven points ahead for the championship and lost by one point. Hopefully history won’t repeat itself this time and Lewis Hamilton can take home his well deserved championship! Right now we are working on a new SEMA video at PM Lifestyle for Mobil 1’s booth and it includes some clips of the McLaren F1 powered by Mobil 1 and Lewis Hamilton talking about his love for the brand. So make sure you stop by and check it out if your a Formula 1 fan. With all this being said the Sunday before SEMA kicks off we will know who the champion will be and I cannot wait another minute. See everyone in Brazil!
