CompuBug By Larry Blasko For Business Wire

Business Wire, Dec 27, 2004

SUMMIT, N.J. -- Humanity really, really annoyed the Heavens. And the Heavens said "You want annoyed? I'll show you annoyed! Let There Be Cell Phones!"

And there were cell phones. And they chirped and tweeted everywhere, day and night, annoying humanity because even with Caller ID, you were never really sure who was calling until you answered, and then it was too late. And Humanity suffered.

But in December, the Heavens permitted CallWave, Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., to offer healing. It's a phone service called CallWave, and if you don't give it a try, you're nuts or the only person on the planet who has no reason to screen calls.

CallWave, available at www.callwave.com , works like this:

After you sign up, you get another number for your cellphone. Your old one still works as before, but the new one has more muscles. When your cellphone rings on the new number, CallWave answers it and let's you listen to the incoming message, just like an answering machine.

If you want to ignore it, do nothing. It will wind up in a voice mailbox you can access later. If you want to talk to the person, just press 1, and you'll interrupt their message and begin conversations, just as you would with a landline answering machine. But there's more.

If you press the number 2, the call is switched to any landline phone you've designated, ending use of your air minutes. The landline telephone will ring, and you can pick up and continue the conversation there.

And if your cell phone is off, but your personal computer with broadband connection is on, you can still accept calls. CallWave will transfer the call via the internet to your PC. The software will play the incoming message over your PC speakers and record it as a wav file. If you want to take the call, you can click a button and your designated landline phone will ring. The software that does all this comes as a free download.

And it's flexible enough to allow changes is message, phone number, etc. The review account CallWave provided worked as soon as I tried it, and the software download and install took less than three minutes, including time to let the dog in.

Technically, all this magic comes from using VoIP. That's Voice over Internet Protocol, and it handles sound as packets of data. It's the generally accepted Next Big Thing in telephony, and even big corporations are equipping their phone systems to accept it.

Here's the best part. After a 30-day free trial, the service most folks would use is $3.95 a month. That's like hiring an intelligent telephone receptionist for $3.95 a month and not violating the wage laws.

Larry Blasko has been covering consumer technology in his CompuBug column for more than 20 years. Questions and comments are welcome at lgblasko@yahoo.com or, via snailmail, at 135 Tulip St., Summit, NJ 07901.