WEBSITE REVIEW

Free-wired

You know those lifeless telephone solicitors who wake you up at 8 a.m., offering confusing 5- to 10-cent deals on long distance and voice mail services? Tell them about these two Internet-based businesses whose services are not only more innovative and practical than your phone company’s, but free. It seems as though most of us think that choosing a phone service is much like choosing a politician – the lesser of evils wins our vote and, once elected, they inevitably manage to piss us off. What the phone companies don’t want you to know is that cashing in on the Internet isn’t just for venture capitalists and Harvard dropouts.

The Net is full of free e-mail, voice mail, fax and even long distance accounts that have minimal (if any) strings attached. Onebox.com, for instance, combines many great telecommunications and organizational features in one inbox. The base of their service revolves around a free, Web-based e-mail account. Hoping that you’ll eventually buy into their Onebox Plus service (at $4.95/month, offering enhanced accessibility, increased file storage and the ability to personalize your outgoing message), Onebox.com will give the free service user a voice mail/fax number and e-mail options that are generally unavailable on other free e-mail accounts. The beauty of the voice mail/fax number is that once someone has left a voice mail or fax, Onebox gives you the option of receiving the message via your e-mail account. Voice mail messages are converted into either .wav or Quicktime files and can thus be played over your computer speakers. The address book and calendar at Onebox are also superb. Onebox can notify you and others via e-mail of any event or appointment on your calendar. Although Onebox does not yet offer local service in metro Detroit, you can get a number that is based in several other large cities (New York, Chicago, L.A., etc.). As an e-mail service alone, Onebox is worthwhile.

If toll-free voice mail is what you want, myTalk.com is the place to go. MyTalk provides a toll-free, voice-activated voice mail account (you get a 1-888 number) as well as a free e-mail account. As an e-mail service, myTalk has only half the options offered by Onebox. MyTalk’s e-mail service also has annoying banner advertisements looming over your inbox. The voice mail service, on the other hand, is quite useful. MyTalk can be accessed on any phone at any time free of charge. Once you call myTalk, you are asked to dial in your extension number or the extension of the person you are trying to reach. At this point, everything is voice activated. For example, say, "Hi, it’s me," and myTalk tells you how many messages are in your inbox (both voice mail and e-mail can be received by accessing your account over the phone – e-mails are read to you by the computer). Simply say, "Dial a number!" and myTalk allows you to make a free two-minute phone call to anywhere in the U.S.

How do they get away with all of this? Marketing, of course. While waiting for the myTalk computer to retrieve your messages, one must endure a 15-second advertisement from myTalk’s sponsors. Making a two-minute phone call requires listening to two such advertisements. Not bad considering that most voice mail services are costly, local only and lacking the new voice recognition technology.

Maybe it was my dad who first told me, "There’s no such thing as a free lunch!" Perhaps that’s why he continues to pay for AOL while I’m using my computer to call Brooklyn for free.

Robert Gorell writes about Web sites for Metro Times.