Talk:Voicemail

This article was proposed for deletion December 2004. The discussion is archived at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Voice Mail.

Revision proposed by Bob Cohn

Hi, I received an email from Bob Cohn suggesting the following version. He's edited the complete article in a word doc and sent it over email. Since, this would be a massive change. I leave it here for a while before moving it in parts to the article. From the text, it appears that he was an early player in the development of Voicemail. I've asked him for references to this effect. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 09:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Since noone objected, I made a rewrite from his version. Feel free to take more parts from that and add to the main article. He's licensed the whole of the content under GFDL. I have the whole article in doc format which I can email to anyone who'd like to work on the article. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 12:53, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Size

I reverted an anon who removed much content. It IS large, but without some mention of intention and some discussion, the deletions seemed inappropriate. (John User:Jwy talk) 14:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

The article is ridiculously long with no sense of proportion in length vs importance of the things it discusses. 71.168.107.143 (talk) 22:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Silicon Sally

Anyone have a citation for "Silicon Sally" at ROLM? A cursory google search returns only references to this page... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Driscoll (talk • contribs) 15:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Active Voice

I'm hesitant to jump in and edit this because of WP:AUTO, but it seems to me that Active Voice [1] belongs in the history here, too. One of the leading players in PC-based voicemail (and we mention AVT and AVST, which I believe were never as large); the original Active Voice Corp. was bought out by Cisco in late 2000 (which is how Cisco got into unified messaging); Cisco sold back part of it (and the name) to its own management, who then reorganized as Active Voice LLC, which was, less than a year later, sold to NEC America, where it remains a wholly owned subsidiary. (I was an employee for some years at AV Corp. and have done contract work for AVLLC - indeed, I'm finishing a project for them at the moment - hence the WP:AUTO concern.) - Jmabel | Talk 23:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Paul Finnigan edits

A number of (apparently COI) edits promoting Paul Finnigan don't provide a reliable source, e.g.,

• date of founding of VMA -

VMA was formed in 1987, the successor to the Voicemail Club of Berne, formed in 1983. verify at www.thevma.com

• dates when Paul Finnigan was an officer of VMA - PF served as President from 1987 to 1999. verify at www.thevma.com
• various comments about Voicemail (trademark doesn't follow style guidelines, and the comments are unsourced)

(REGISTRANT) Televoice International, Inc. CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 2225 Martin Ave. Santa Clara CALIFORNIA 95050 (LAST LISTED OWNER) VOICEMAIL INTERNATIONAL, INC. CORPORATION BY CHANGE OF NAME FROM CALIFORNIA 19925 STEVENS CREEK BLVD. CUPERTINO CALIFORNIA 94014 Verify www.uspto.gov Given the nature of the edits, using Paul Finnigan's website as a "source" is inherently unreliable. There are here/there related sources, but the ones I've found differ from Paul Finnigan's version - later dates, etc. Tedickey (talk) 00:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC) fwiw, these links are interesting

• http://www.lars.ae/
• http://www.thevma.com/board.htm
• http://www.findthatpatent.com/Telephonic_voice_message_transmission_control_method,6173043.html
• http://www.freshpatents.com/Paul-F-Finnigan-LosGatos-invdirf.php
• http://www.patentlens.net/patentlens/search_ajax.cgi?patnum=US/6173043
• http://www.ivma.ch/Downloads/history.pdf

Tedickey (talk) 00:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

References

I suggest to switch titles between notes and references to follow Wikipedia editing style. And everyone can start adding reliable sources to improve this article. Klapouchy (talk) 18:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Possibly. However one issue with the (existing) notes section is that it appears to have been cut/pasted from some other source, and most of its content seems to require some work to verify it. Tedickey (talk) 11:01, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Audio Letters

I have a personal resource of information that would date the earliest origins and use of voicemail to the period of time during WWII. An older friend of mine described to me a (voicemail) business that he had started and operated commercially on a fairly large scale, during the war years of the 1940's. What he had put together was a recording studio that was situated next to the "3 minute dating service" that catered to the US soldiers in Honolulu, on their way to the Pacific theater, of which most of the soldiers likely knew that they would never be returning to their homes and loved ones again.

The soldiers would record their last voice messages to their families and loved ones on a wax record, which was widely used during that time period. They would then send the wax record via the US Postal Service back home etc. and the recipients would play the "voicemail messages" on their wax record players, this piece of equipment was apparently fairly common. My friend told me that he had, had a booming business, and likely so, being located next to the "3 minute dating service". Please contact me if you find this post interesting and if you have questions as I would like to have this included into the history section of this "Voicemail" post. I believe that I am one of only two persons (the other person was present and also witness to the story from my friend at the time it was being told to the both of us) who knows this information, and that this is my first attempt to publish such information. Dkhoe (talk) 07:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See Audio letter as this topic needs expanding. Lexlex (talk) 21:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)