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Ellen Muraskin [email protected]
In the parallel web-enabled messaging universe, where the goal is to give away as much service to as many people as fast as possible, eVoice (Memo Park, CA - 650-330-300, www.evoice.com) has come up with a great consumer lure: They will answer your existing home phone for free. They will record messages on no-answer or busy signals. Unplug the answering machine, pay your RBOC fivesix-seven dollars less per month. Unlike all the messaging.coms I've seen so far, eVoice is not asking subscribers to use a new phone number to get into their network. If your line is busy on the Internet, eVoice will let you know someone is calling and give you caller ID.
eVoice answers your own phone with your own greeting. Dial your own number and hit * to retrieve your messages, just like telco voicemail. Or, like all the Webleys and Porticos and visittalk.coms and onebox.coms, retrieve your messages off a website using RealAudio, anywhere you can get Internet access. Or dial a local number or an 800 number.
eVoice doesn't need to give out DID numbers to every subscriber, because they already...