4 ms·

My strategy is: if I don’t know the caller they can leave a voicemail. If it’s not important enough for a voicemail, it’s not important.

stOneskull 8y ago
Same here. Makes sense. If it's important at all they'll leave a message.
grawprog 8y ago
The problem with this for me is my voicemail is now so full of spam messages from numbers I don't answer or block that I can't ever get any useful messages if there are any. A lot of the time my inbox remains full and I can't actually receive new voicemails. It's just gotten to the point where the new voicemail icon has become a permanent fixture on my notification bar I totally ignore.
- freehunter 8y ago
  Visual voicemail is one of the best things I've ever seen. Especially with transcription turned on.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    I've never heard of this before. Unfortunately after checking it out, it looks like my carrier only offers it for iphones. This does look like a handy feature though.
    - dboreham 8y ago
      Hmm...I worked on this 25 years ago. Baby steps...
    - matwood 8y ago
      Google Voice will transcribe any VMs and send them as a text. The transcription is good enough to know if it's someone you need to call back or add their number to your block list.
      - grawprog 8y ago
        I appreciate the suggestion, but I've disabled all the google things on my phone and don't plan on re-enabling them any time soon.
      - chadlavi 8y ago
        this is also done automatically in iOS through the phone app
        matwood 8y ago
        I should check that out sometime. I've been using the GV one since long before it was offered on iOS.
      - scruple 8y ago
        It can't transcribe the Chinese scam calls that I get 5x daily, though. I've taken to answering every call again recently because my family has some health stuff going on. Otherwise, I have to physically listen to every voicemail to ensure that I didn't miss an important call because someone in the hospital had a thick accent or any other benign software issue related to NLP problems.
- ansible 8y ago
  That's weird. I get calls from scammers occasionally, but they don't ever leave VM.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    There's two I get regularly. One is from people pretending to be the Canada Revenue Agency. The other is a message in Cantonese, that according to my coworker who gets them too, is from someone pretending to be from the Chinese embassy basically saying the same thing as the fake CRA one. That you owe money and a lawsuit is being prepared under your name, without actually mentioning your name. The one from the 'CRA' is almost comical. It sounds like something a child would say. I've talked to the government enough to know how they talk. They also don't use odd voice concealing effects typically. I actually called the number the CRA one left back once and a person with a French accent answered pretending to be from the CRA. I just said if they called my number again I was going to report them to the rcmp and then hung up. It stopped for a few months after that. I'm assuming if it was actually Canada revenue, they would have called back. All I was getting were the Cantonese ones. The CRA ones only started again recently.
- aeternus 8y ago
  The concept of a 'full' voicemail is also backwards. It should be implemented as a circular buffer, if full, the oldest gets replaced.
  - ZeikJT 7y ago
    I wholly disagree. The system as it works today is miles better than a circular buffer. People trying to leave new voicemails are informed that there is no more room and thus they know that if it is important they should try calling back later. If it just deleted old entries then it's possible someone left an important message and assume you'll hear it but then it just gets silently deleted. Imagine if PC storage devices worked this way, it'd be chaos.
- simonblack 8y ago
  Use the 'this number not in use' tones (http://www.k3pgp.org/telezap.htm http://www.k3pgp.org/telezap.htm) as I described in my reply to 'SomeHacker44' above. That cuts out many (most?) garbage voicemails.

stOneskull 8y ago

Same here. Makes sense. If it's important at all they'll leave a message.

grawprog 8y ago

The problem with this for me is my voicemail is now so full of spam messages from numbers I don't answer or block that I can't ever get any useful messages if there are any. A lot of the time my inbox remains full and I can't actually receive new voicemails. It's just gotten to the point where the new voicemail icon has become a permanent fixture on my notification bar I totally ignore.

freehunter 8y ago
Visual voicemail is one of the best things I've ever seen. Especially with transcription turned on.
- grawprog 8y ago
  I've never heard of this before. Unfortunately after checking it out, it looks like my carrier only offers it for iphones. This does look like a handy feature though.
  - dboreham 8y ago
    Hmm...I worked on this 25 years ago. Baby steps...
  - matwood 8y ago
    Google Voice will transcribe any VMs and send them as a text. The transcription is good enough to know if it's someone you need to call back or add their number to your block list.
    - grawprog 8y ago
      I appreciate the suggestion, but I've disabled all the google things on my phone and don't plan on re-enabling them any time soon.
    - chadlavi 8y ago
      this is also done automatically in iOS through the phone app
      - matwood 8y ago
        I should check that out sometime. I've been using the GV one since long before it was offered on iOS.
    - scruple 8y ago
      It can't transcribe the Chinese scam calls that I get 5x daily, though. I've taken to answering every call again recently because my family has some health stuff going on. Otherwise, I have to physically listen to every voicemail to ensure that I didn't miss an important call because someone in the hospital had a thick accent or any other benign software issue related to NLP problems.
ansible 8y ago
That's weird. I get calls from scammers occasionally, but they don't ever leave VM.
- grawprog 8y ago
  There's two I get regularly. One is from people pretending to be the Canada Revenue Agency. The other is a message in Cantonese, that according to my coworker who gets them too, is from someone pretending to be from the Chinese embassy basically saying the same thing as the fake CRA one. That you owe money and a lawsuit is being prepared under your name, without actually mentioning your name. The one from the 'CRA' is almost comical. It sounds like something a child would say. I've talked to the government enough to know how they talk. They also don't use odd voice concealing effects typically. I actually called the number the CRA one left back once and a person with a French accent answered pretending to be from the CRA. I just said if they called my number again I was going to report them to the rcmp and then hung up. It stopped for a few months after that. I'm assuming if it was actually Canada revenue, they would have called back. All I was getting were the Cantonese ones. The CRA ones only started again recently.
aeternus 8y ago
The concept of a 'full' voicemail is also backwards. It should be implemented as a circular buffer, if full, the oldest gets replaced.
- ZeikJT 7y ago
  I wholly disagree. The system as it works today is miles better than a circular buffer. People trying to leave new voicemails are informed that there is no more room and thus they know that if it is important they should try calling back later. If it just deleted old entries then it's possible someone left an important message and assume you'll hear it but then it just gets silently deleted. Imagine if PC storage devices worked this way, it'd be chaos.
simonblack 8y ago
Use the 'this number not in use' tones (http://www.k3pgp.org/telezap.htm http://www.k3pgp.org/telezap.htm) as I described in my reply to 'SomeHacker44' above. That cuts out many (most?) garbage voicemails.