I can’t remember how I found out about this service, but somehow I got connected to it. YouMail is a cool voicemail service that can be used with cell phones. Basically you sign up (for free) on their site (www.youmail.com), register your phone number, do a couple set up steps on your phone, and you are ready to use their service.

“But why is their service cool?” you might be wondering and you continue “I already have voicemail on my phone.” Well.

FIRST – You have access to your voicemail over the web. This means you can see who left you messages, listen to them, forward them to an email address if you need to, and just generally keep your messages in order at a glance if you get alot of messages.

SECOND - You can record personal outgoing messages to individuals based on the phone number. This is pretty cool. I can see doing this if you are going out of town, and want to leave details for only certian people, like emergency contact info. Or if you want to leave something funny for your friends, and not have to worry about that potential employer calling and being put off by your unprofessional message. For all other callers there is a standard message that plays that stays the same.
You also have the ability to have a message play and then hang up without giving callers the option of leaving a message. This could be useful during a breakup (the don’t ever call me again message without having to screen).

There are a couple of things about this service that might deter some people from using this service.
First – when a message is left, you have to be notified somehow. Currently the main way that this is done is through text message. If you don’t have a text messaging plan this may not be the way to go, especially if you get alot of people calling you and leaving messages. Currently I have 200 text messages included in my package and not many people call me so I dont think it should be a problem.

Second- The ability to forward calls is required. I use Cingular and that is included in the package, but you should check with your provider.

So I am going to try it out and keep you posted on how it works, but as of this moment I am pretty excited about it.