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New Service Helps You Avoid Awkward Calls

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 July 2008, 13:20 CDT

A new free phone service called Slydial is making it easier for the most timid callers to deliver those awkward messages without actually having to talk to anyone.

Slydial lets you connect directly to a person’s cell phone voicemail without having to wait through the traditional ringing process, that could, inevitably, result in them picking up your call.

Callers from a cell phone or landline first call (267) SLY-DIAL and are then prompted to dial the other person’s cell phone number, and then… straight to their voicemail, no chance of an embarrassing encounter!

Users have the choice of first listening to a short advertisement or paying a 15-cent per call subscription fee to bypass the ad and go straight to voicemail.

Recipients should then get a voice mail notification, and sometimes they will see a caller's number show up as a missed call, too.

“It can be useful not only in the dating scene, but also in the hectic business world,” said Gavin Macomber, co-founder of MobileSphere Ltd., the Boston-based communications company behind Slydial.

"Everybody has gone through the scenario where they've called somebody and just hoped they got voice mail so they didn't have to have a conversation," he said.

"It's been really handy," said Nora Rubinoff, 45, who runs an administrative support company, At Your Service Cincinnati Ltd.

She has left reminder messages for people one of her clients intends to interview. She said she also uses it when her husband travels to a different time zone for work; she can leave him a Slydial message without disturbing him at an odd time of day.

The idea for Slydial came up while MobileSphere developed the voice mail routing component of a service meant to lower the cost of international roaming on cell phones, said Macomber.

In March, the company rolled out a private test phase of Slydial, and has added about 5,000 users since then. The service opened to the general public in a "beta" testing phase on Monday.

Calling in straight to another person’s voicemail isn’t an entirely new concept, most major cell phone carriers offer subscribers the option of sending voice messages to other people, but usually only to customers of the same wireless company.

But Slydial makes it possible to do it with any major wireless carrier's customer.

The only constraints to this service are it can, currently, only be used in the U.S, and generally won't work with prepaid cell phones. Also, sly dialers must have the caller ID feature activated on their phones, which Macomber said is meant, in part, to prevent people from using it to harass people undetected.

But callers beware, several test calls between cell phones made the recipient's phone emit an abbreviated ring before leading to voice mail, which could result in a quick, dreaded call back!

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On the Net:

• Slydial

Source: redObrit Staff & Wire Reports

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