Getting it all together
by Douglas E. Welch
October 5, 1999
© 1999, Douglas E. Welch
Just as physicists continue to reach for the Grand Unified Theory
that will reconcile the differences between Quantum Mechanics
and Newtonian physics, technologists are seeking for a way to
combine all the different communications systems into one neat
package. Instead of having separate email, fax and voice mail
systems, these technologists want to combine all your messages
into one, unified Inbox.
Due to the differences between these 3 technologies, progress
has been somewhat slow. Today, though, there are several Internet-based
systems that are taking the first tentative steps. All of these
systems approach the task in different ways. Some only deal with
email and fax, but I am sure over the next year we will be seeing
an explosive growth.
OneBox
Onebox is a relative newcomer to the messaging game. For free they provide
a email box, a local fax number and a local voice mail box. All
three can be received, viewed or heard by logging into the OneBox
web page using your user id. In addition you can also hear your
voice mail from any phone by dialing your local number and accessing
it as you would any traditional voice mail system. Unfortunately,
OneBox does not have any facility for listening to your email,
via computer voice synthesis, over the phone.
jFax
jFax provides many of the same services as OneBox, but it is a subscription
service. You receive similar services to those of OneBox but there
is a $15 setup fee and a monthly fee of $12.50. I am pleased that
they are able to keep the price of the service within the average
user’s price range, unlike current wireless email services. In
addition, jFax gives you the ability to listen to your email from
any telephone using computer voice synthesis. While this won’t
be a perfect rendition of the email, it can allow you to respond
to the most important items in your Inbox while you are out of
the office.
eFax
eFax only seeks to unify 2 aspects of the email/fax./voice mail triumvirate.
Their free services allow you to set up a dedicated fax phone
number which receives your faxes and then forwards them automatically
to whatever email account you wish. You then use a free viewer
to read and print these faxes. Unfortunately, the free eFax phone
numbers are limited to one geographical region. This is no problem
if someone is faxing you from the other side of the country, but
it can seem a little silly when someone has to dial long distance
just to send a fax across town. The commercial version of eFax
can provide you with a number in your local area code for a small
monthly fee.
CallWave/FaxWave
FaxWave is a similar service to eFax with the same phone number limitations.
At publication time CallWave’s web site was announcing a new,
expanded service would be available starting October 5, 1999.
MailCall
MailCall takes another tact by providing access to any standard SMTP/POP3
email box from any telephone. Using your login id you can dial
the MailCall phone number log in and then listen to the headers
of all your waiting email messages. I was pleasantly surprised
with the quality of the voice synthesis system. I found that during
my trial period, when I was out of town without a laptop, I was
able to listen to most of my email with little or no problems.
You can then select which messages you would like to hear in full.
This is a commercial service with both a setup fee and a monthly
service charge.
Still a long way to go
While all these systems provide some unified inbox services there
is still more work to be done. New wireless technologies will
need to be considered and companies may even want to start thinking
about the eventual demise of, rather archaic, fax technology.
The fact that these services exist at all is good news for all
of us. It seems only a matter of time before the completely unified
inbox is both commonplace and inexpensive.
Douglas E. Welch is a freelance writer and computer consultant
in Van Nuys, California.He also writes Career Opportunities, a weekly column on high-tech careers and A Gardener's Notebook. You can find more of Douglas' writing on his web page at: http://www.welchwrite.com/
He can reached via email at douglas@welchwrite.com
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