Really personalizing your voicemail

By MEGAN SCOTT
Associated Press (ASAP)

Go ahead and record a racy outgoing message for your boyfriend. Your boss won't ever hear it.

A free service called YouMail lets users record separate voicemail greetings for each person in their address book. A sexy one for your boyfriend; a professional one for the boss; and something like "Hi dad! I'm too busy studying to come to the phone" for your family.

"YouMail seamlessly replaces the voicemail service you have for Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.," says Drew Avril, a spokesman for YouMail. "When someone calls, it goes right to YouMail's voicemail. ... It totally freaks people out and gets them all excited."

The service works with all the big cell phone carriers (land lines hopefully coming soon, the company says). You log onto http://www.youmail.com , program your phone to forward unanswered calls to the company, upload your phone book, highlight a name and use the computer's microphone to record the greeting. You can also choose from a library of generic greetings and download from an interactive community where others share their funny and creative greetings.

The service lets users access voicemails by phone or online. Users can choose to be notified of new messages by text message or e-mail.

"You can retrieve it via the Internet and then treat it as e-mail. You can forward them, undelete them," says Ken Brickley, vice president of marketing and co-founder of YouMail.

The final big feature, says Brickley, is DitchMail, which lets users record a custom greeting that doesn't allow particular callers to leave a message. You can even download the famous operator message, "You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service."

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asap reporter Megan Scott is based in New York.