What is your favorite voice mail solution?

[Joshua B]

I'd like listeners to be able to call in to a voice mail number and leave messages for the podcast. I'd like to be able to retrieve those voice mails in mp3 format as opposed to a proprietary format and transfer the files to wherever I decide. I'd like to do this all without a telephone line and I'd like to do it for free or for a small annual fee. Any suggestions?

I have looked into Skype but I'm not sure if their free service includes a voice mail number. I know you have to pay for their "In" service. I understand Kishkish provides Skype voice mail service for free, but I'm not sure if Skype assigns me a voice mail number in the first place.

[lyzz]

I've heard odeo.com offers the service.

[Joshua B]

Hmmm, I see nothing about voice mail on their site.

[Bucket]

Sounds like a job for k7.net to me. The only thing I can see that it won't do is give you your messages in MP3 format. But it's free, so it's really hard to complain about it.

[Webzu]

K7 is great. It's free and you can receive your voicemail via an email as a wav file which you can convert to an MP3.

[lyzz]

Here is an example on odeo that I found on google (randomly):
http://odeo.com/sendmeamessage/Bluzndablood

I'm not sure if it makes it mp3, though, but I think it can be embedded into podcasts.

[Joshua B]

K7 does exactly what I need. I just signed up for an account. Thank you so much!

[Slone]

Skype www.skype.com is King for me because of the audio quality and consistency. K7 Lost so many of my comments or they were wrecked.


MyChingo www.mychingo.com - Offers better recording quality from your homepage through an applet. Quality for me has often been better than Skype, ODEO, and K7 all of which I've used. You can also download the audio file, which is nice.

Hope that helped as well...
Scott

[Joshua B]

Skype www.skype.com (http://www.skype.com) is King for me because of the audio quality and consistency. K7 Lost so many of my comments or they were wrecked.

Oh, well that news that Skype has better audio quality is huge. Do you use a paid version of Skype? Does the free version give you your own phone number?

[Slone]

Why don't you go over to Skype and explore the service yourself, which is better than me selling their service. Paid service is really quite cheap and IMO you get what you pay for... well usually that's how it goes ;)

However... I said:
MyChingo www.mychingo.com (http://www.mychingo.com/) - Offers better recording quality from your homepage through an applet. Quality for me has often been better than Skype, ODEO, and K7 all of which I've used. You can also download the audio file, which is nice.MyChingo audio quality is much better.

Why not try them all.. Offer more than one option for listeners.
Cheers,
Scott

[Joshua B]

Thanks. However, I don't see anything about MyChingo offering a voice mail phone number with their service, which is my requirement in this case.