I was talking to someone over the weekend about how archaic voice mail systems are. You have absolutely no way of prioritizing your own messages. You are forced to listen to ALL messages, (or at least skip through them), in order to establish who called and for what reason. The only method of prioritizing is the sender being able to mark a voicemail “high” priority. And as anyone who’s worked in an office environment knows, for some every message is of high priority.

Apparently Apple’s iPhone will have an onscreen feature displaying who exactly left you a voice mail, enabling you to SELECT which voice mails you want to listen to.

Even better, this morning on NPR I listened to a segment with Mario Armstrong of Simulscribe, a company that will send an e-mail or text of your voicemail when received. Even though voice recognition software isn’t a perfectly refined art, being able to scan your messages and avoid slamming your fist waiting for someone’s long rambling voicemail to just “get to the point already” is a service that’s long overdue.

Listen to Steve Inskeep test out the service here.

It’s $10 a month for 40 messages. http://www.simulscribe.com/