iPhone Atlas

This activities ribbon is a welcome addition to YouMail on iPhone.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

We're big fans of visual voice mail, which lets you view, and then listen to, your voice mail messages in any order you'd like, not just chronologically. It's even better when that service is free (voice-to-text transcriptions, however, are typically extra). To that end, we were happy to see that YouMail's visual voice mail app for iPhone updated on Thursday, getting features such as push notification, and a new activities ribbon that lets you reply to and forward messages. You can also now organize messages by folders.

In addition, YouMail 1.5 includes a feature for toggling between speaker and handset mode, the ability to switch on automatic message playing (in the Settings), and long-awaited slide-to-delete functionality for messages. The revised app also adds the fun, but minor feature of shaking the iPhone to refresh the screen.

Sadly, YouMail 1.5 constantly crashed on us in the first 15 minutes of use, even after several reboots. It seems to have stabilized now, so it could have been a mild case of iPhone indigestion.

YouMail Visual Voicemail for iPhone competes with visual voice mail services like Google Voice, which is in beta, which does not have a dedicated iPhone app, and which offers an iPhone Web experience that my colleague Rafe Needleman gently referred to as "a load of crap."

What do you think of the new YouMail, of Google Voice, or of visual voice mail in general? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Over the weekend, we began to see reports from iPhone users who hadn't received Visual Voice mail notifications for as long as two weeks. We were a bit skeptical until we tested our own iPhone and discovered three messages from the previous week. After checking with friends, we found five additional reports of lost Visual Voice mail messages.

As of now, we have to agree with TechCrunch's MG Siegler who called "AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure." Though we're just as dumbfounded and amazed at how widespread the problem is, there are two simple fixes that we suggest you try if you're having this problem.

(Credit: David Martin)

Option 1

• Launch the Phone application
• Go to the dial pad
• Press and hold 1 to access your voice mail the old fashioned way
• Check your messages
• End the call to voice mail
• Using another phone call your iPhone and leave a message

Option 2

• Launch the Settings app
• Select General
• Select Reset
• Select Reset Network Settings
• Allow the iPhone to reboot

If your Visual Voice mail still isn't working after trying these steps, you might need to call AT&T. For most people that we've surveyed, however, the fix has done the trick. Even so, the problem stinks.

(Credit: Mark/Space, Inc.)

The latest update for Mark/Space's The Missing Sync for iPhone, a popular phone-syncing utility, has fixed the app's compatibility with iPhone OS 3.0. Released this week, version 2.0.2 also adds syncing support for transferring voice mail and voice memos between the iPhone and a Mac.

According to an e-mail sent to users, the app is now completely compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, thus eliminating problems that the prior version had with syncing new notes, text messages, or call history. Now they can be imported into a SMS Log, Call Log, or Mark/Space Notebook.

Mark/Space describes the new features as follows:

• New in Version 2.0.2, The Missing Sync transfers iPhone voice mail and voice memos to the Mac to give you an archive of voice messages and notes. You can organize and play the content in Mark/Space Notebook, a full-featured note-taking application for the Mac that is included with The Missing Sync.
• Save to your Mac favorite and noteworthy voice mails, such as cute messages from the kids and birthday and congratulations wishes. You can archive voice messages to help track client and customer conversations for business purposes.
• Transfer voice memos recorded on your iPhone to your Mac and organize them with text notes in Mark/Space Notebook. This is great for students, seminar attendees, and conference goers.

We downloaded and tested the new version and saw only one issue: he Terms of Service in the installer contained the word "beta," which makes us wonder if the update was final software. At the time of this writing, we could not confirm.

Are you experiencing problems with this application or other applications that interface with your iPhone on your Mac or PC? Did the 2.0.2 update resolve any problems you experienced with the older version? Let us know in the comments.

(Credit: YouMail)

YouMail's visual voice mail app for iPhone may look less sexy than the sleek, crafted application interfaces we've grown used to, but in its first effort, functionality will be more important than form.

This last weekend, users of YouMail's freemium Visual Voicemail Plus service were able to start reading and responding to voice messages from iPhones. Like rival visual voice mail services, YouMail lets you manage voice messages like e-mail messages in exchange for making the service your default mobile answering machine. In addition to playing back voice messages in any order you choose, you're able to save, delete, and respond from YouMail.com or from your phone.

Transcribing the voice call into text costs extra with a tiered pricing plan. The personalized greeting messages you can tailor to favorite callers is free.

Future versions will likely take advantage of the push notification slated for Apple's iPhone 3.0 software update, due out June 17.

To celebrate the release, YouMail is announcing a contest on June 16. YouMail will enter anyone who downloads Visual Voicemail Plus on the iPhone or BlackBerry in a drawing to win a year of its Read-It Select Unlimited free transcription service, valued at $329.99.

YouMail is available on BlackBerry and iPhone, and can be found as a beta app for Android.

Several users have experienced an issue in which the iPhone 3G does not ring and calls are, instead, routed straight to voicemail. Of course, this can occur if the iPhone is off or the signal is weak or non-existent. However, several users have reported this behavior even with a full available signal.

Among the user reports from this Apple Discussions thread:

• "Around November 15th, I started seeing some of the same problems on my iPhone 3G (calls not coming through, voicemails & texts getting delayed, unable to make calls / send texts)."
• "It seems totally random when it happens to me. On the one hand, several calls will come through as expected, no problems. Then there will simply be a "voice message" tone and the on-screen message saying that someone had left me a voice message - while the phone sits next to me, fully charged, silent."
• "Just wanted to say that I have the same problem... Phone with good signal but no ring and straight to voicemail."

Possible solutions for this issue:

• Turn off Bluetooth in Settings
• Turn off WiFi
• Turn off 3G
• Replace your SIM card (requires contacting your provider)
• Reset the iPhone: Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

SlyDial, the telephone service that lets you dial directly to someone's voice mail, has launched three new mobile applications for users on Windows Mobile, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. The new apps have direct access to your phone's contact list so you can begin a SlyDial call without having to first phone in to the service then remember your contact's number.

All three are free, and with the exception of the iPhone app--which is pending Apple's approval, are available right now. The iPhone version is also the only one of the three that does not require you to be a registered SlyDial user to make calls.

Since we covered SlyDial's official launch back in July, it's added a handy feature that lets you assign numerical shortcuts to contacts you think you're going to call frequently. This lets you call them by dialing in the first four letters of their name (or nickname) followed by the # key.

Below is a demo of how this works on a BlackBerry, effectively giving you the option to SlyDial from anywhere via contextual menu:

(Credit: YouMail)

YouMail, a free visual voice mail solution to organize cell phone messages like e-mail for online playback and response, announced on Thursday that customers can start viewing those same voice mail messages from their mobile phones.

By pointing the mobile browser to YouMail's home page, fans of the service can access their account with the usual login and pin to view contact's images, play back messages in any order, and forward or reply to voice messages in a form factor tailored from YouMail's servers to many high-end smartphones.

YouMail certainly isn't the first visual voice mail service to succeed in delivering transcribed messages to smartphones, which it does through a separate e-mail or SMS feature. Unlike some competitors for mobile voice message management, however, like PhoneTag (previously SimulScribe) and CallWave, YouMail's new service will retain the audio and organizational features of its rich online product.

The service will be ready for a wide variety of smartphones, YouMail said in a statement, including models from Research In Motion, Nokia, HTC, Morotola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and Palm. YouMail claims that YouMail's smartphone formula "even" works on iPhones, which already run on the full mobile Web with manufacturer Apple's Safari browser.