Two technology ideas

I hate clearing voicemail messages. I much prefer people text or e-mail if I don’t answer my phone. But for business reasons I can’t switch it off. I find it annoying because I have to ring a number to find out what the messages are, and then they are gone unless I write them down. A text message you can keep for ages until dealt with.

So that got me thinking about a great service for a mobile phone company to offer. A voicemail to text service. For a few $ a month they will listen to your voicemail, type it up and send it to you as a text message and/or e-mail. That would be a seriously useful service.

There is a similiar service already called Aangel, where for $10/mth you can call 808 and leave a message that they immediately type up and text and e-mail to you, plus they e-mail the audio recording. I use this and is well worth the money as if I think of a blog idea, or run into someone whom I should call next week – I can just phone 808 and get a reminder to do so. They can even send meeting requests into Outlook.

But as useful as that is, a service that did the same for the voicemail messages other people leave me would be bloody brilliant. And it should be damn easy to do.

The other technology idea I had was being able to book an appointment with you doctor online. How it would be great if you could go to a website for your medical centre and see when the next free appointment is for your normal doctor. You could also see when other doctors have a free spot, and decide whether or not it is urgent enough to see another doctor earlier or wait for your normal one.

Such a system could also do some pre-screening by asking you some basic questions about what the problem is, and this would allow practice nurses to prepare stuff in advance of seeing the doctor.

By coincidence I saw my doctor yesterday, and he said their software firm is close to finalising such a system, so in a year or so this may be possible.