Best regards, Dave Davis Davis Piano Service 425-226-0102 -----Original Message----- From: John Ross <jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca> Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:12:38 To: <pianotech at ptg.org> Subject: Re: [pianotech] Smart phone in the field I hope that the message is a 'pretend' message? I think the young lady wouldn't be too pleased, having her info all over the internet. John Ross ----- Original Message ----- From: Ben Gac To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 5:59 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Smart phone in the field Going a couple steps further using a smartphone in the field: - First of all, my turn by turn GPS is handsfree and has a sultry woman's voice telling me where to go! Not only can I type in the addresses with my QWERTY keypad (when I'm not driving), I can also select the "Drive To" option when I'm looking a client's info either in my calendar or contacts screen. I also can speak the address and it figures it out as well. The screen isn't HUGE, but it's sizeable and easy to follow; I put my phone in my cupholder and it works quite well. - Second, and more importantly--groundbreaking, in fact--I've discovered a tool that provides "Visual Voicemail". There's a company out there called YouMail, and they offer all kinds of voicemail services. Instead of your call being forwarded to your normal voicemail when it goes unanswered, with the press of a couple buttons it forwards your unanswered calls to YouMail. Read on. If you're like me, you probably use your cell phone primarily for business, but get a few personal calls as well. YouMail allows you to record individual voice greetings for anyone in your contacts list. When my wife calls, she doesn't get "You've reached Ben Gac, Registered Piano Technician with Ben's Piano Tuning..." She gets a personal, much warmer greeting. I can also record special messages for specific clients, colleague, or dealers that are specific to them. In fact, if there's somebody I don't like, I also have the option of not allowing that person to leave me a message. YouMail even gives you the option of a false "this number has been disconnected" message that could fool anyone! Let's go back to the client scenario. After the client listens to your recorded message (just like a normal voicemail) they can leave a message. One thing I already like about that is that there's no extra blabber that my wireless service adds on to my message, "To leave a call back number, press 5. To page this person... When you are finished recording..." Geez! Everyone knows this stuff, it wastes everyone's time, and it's confusing to me when clients attempt to use those other features. Once the message has been left by the client, a computer transcribes the voicemail--usually fairly acurately (check out the attached pic for details)--and either sends you their message in an email or an SMS text. The email arrives about a minute or so after they've left the message, and you can READ what they said. To me, this is invaluable in the field. If I'm not able to answer a phone call in the middle of a tuning, in about a minute I'll be able to read what the caller said, and decide what action to take. The other cool features that has YouMail are: it looks up the person's phone number in the public directory and includes it in the message, and it tells you the date, time, and phone carrier that they were using (if they're not already in your contacts). Absolutely wonderful. I don't need to carry a pen or paper to write notes any more, all of the info is already in front of me, and I can copy and paste it directly into my calendar. I'll try not to rant and rave about it any further. Go to www.YouMail.com to find out more if you're interested. The service only costs $17.99/month; it's cheaper and has more features than any of the other similar products out there right now. This wasn't intended to be a commercial, but I can't express enough how useful it is! -Ben Ben Gac, RPT Ben's Piano Tuning (708) 660-9331 - office (630) 291-5654 - mobile www.benspianotuning.com ben at benspianotuning.com John M.Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090110/2e90a4f1/attachment.html>
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