Annoying, isn’t it? And yet, if you are an attorney, there are dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of people who can make your phone ring any time they want to.

This is my favorite part of my answering machine message:

I return phone calls at 10 and 4 if I am in the office. If you need to reach me more quickly, please send me an e-mail.

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“Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it.”

Oh, if only it were so! Voicemails are one of the most annoying time sucks in my work day.

I hate the phone. It is always an interruption. But if I don’t answer it, then there is that blinking voicemail notification staring me in the face, reminding me that I will have to listen long, rambling messages.

I would much rather quickly scan an e-mail when I have a few free moments and mental cycles, but nobody seems to listen to the part of my message that politely requests an e-mail instead of a voicemail.

I would love to just stop using voicemail entirely, but ours is not a profession where that would fly. Instead, I am thinking about using an assistant—or maybe a service like SpinVox or PhoneTag, that converts voicemail messages to text and sends them as e-mail.

A world without voicemail. Beautiful.

I decided to give PhoneTag a try for my trip to visit mynsister in Alaska (hello from Juno!), and I am loving it.

The rumor mill thinks so. I am getting ready to throw over my Blackberry Pearl when the new handsets show up. Screw the iPhone, I’m going to go make sure my tent is patched up for camping in front of the T-Mobile kiosk at the mall.

(Disclaimer: I am probably not going to camp out for a phone. Ever. Or even buy an Android phone right away. But I am really excited.)

Rumor: T-Mobile prepping Android phone for Oct. 1 | BoingBoing Gadgets (via everyone)

Linux is pretty.

About two months ago, I bought a Philips VOIP 841 Skype phone to replace my old-fashioned land line. I started using Skype because I wanted the flexibility of having the same number at work, home, or whatever coffee shop I happened to be at. But ordinarily with Skype, you are tied to your computer, which runs the Skype software.

Not so with the VOIP 841. It plugs directly into your ethernet jack (or in my case, my router) and connects to the internet and your Skype account by itself. No computer needed.

And for that, I love it. The sound quality is great on our standard Qwest DSL (1.5 mbps) line, even though five of us share the line. The phone is wireless so I can wander around the office, and, of course, it takes up a lot less room than the big office phone it replaced (and looks good, too).

But the phone has two flaws, one of which drives me insane, and I am seriously considering burning the thing.

First, the lesser flaw. There is no way to clear the history so that, if you listened to your voicemail on your computer, your phone does not keep blinking “40 voicemails” at you. You have to listen to each voicemail one at a time in order to clear the notification, which is rather cumbersome and annoying. This flaw, however, I could deal with, if not for the second flaw.

Second, the serious flaw. Call waiting on this phone is broken. Badly. When someone calls in, the phone beeps to let you know. But even if you reject the call, it keeps beeping every few seconds no matter what you do, cutting into your conversation repeatedly, again and again and again and again. I called Philips’ overseas support line, but this problem does not seem to be in the binder they give their CSRs.

This is a serious flaw. I cannot carry on a conversation while my phone is beeping at me every few seconds. It turns a pleasant conversation into one where I want to stomp on the phone.

And for this flaw alone, I cannot recommend the VOIP 841. Get something else. But test it first to make sure the call waiting features work properly.

I am going to be taking my first vacation since going solo this Friday, and I’m a bit nervous. About my cases, that is. Since I have no support staff, if something comes up (despite my careful preparation), there isn’t anyone who can pick up the slack. So I need to be able to check voicemail and make calls, check e-mail, keep up-to-date with my schedule, and have access to all of my files.

Also, we are going to be in Barcelona for a week, the most pickpocket-friendly city in Europe, so I would rather not bring along expensive toys, if I can avoid it. So the laptop needs to stay at home.

Here is what I came up with:

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It is somewhat ironic, I suppose, that a geek such as I should be so late to the game on this, but I just got my first PDA/mobile phone. Quite exciting. I did use a Palm for a while, but I never liked the way it synced my appointments.

This, on the other hand, is far better, and I love the full keyboard. And I can finally check my calendar without opening my laptop!

Now, before I lose all credibility, I want to admit that I am a slow adopter of technology, by necessity, since I am a practicing attorney, after all. And as I have said before, I prefer software to hardware and gadgets. I go slow and test thoroughly because I cannot afford to waste tons of time switching from one system to another.

But this is a fantastic piece of kit (although I am sure I will maim my thumbs ere long.

Tom Gallagher ignited a long thread of discussion on online fax services on the SoloSmall list today. Tom was wondering about pricing as well as whether or not he could port his current fax number to an online fax service. The short answer: (1) cheaper than a land-line based fax, and (2) nope.

Tom’s e-mail after the jump.

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My mantra when it comes to law office technology is “simplify, simplify, simplify.” I chant that to myself while wrestling with billing preferences in Billing Matters, always to no avail. Technology is no good if it makes your life more complicated or difficult. I suppose I will never really reach that point where everything works perfectly and just the way I like it, but dammit, I can try.

One of the things in my office that just doesn’t belong is my telephone. It looks old and archaic, and it’s honestly one of the least-used peripherals in my office. Plus, it isn’t connected to anything else. I love being able to manage everything from my computer. So, I am thinking about getting rid of it.

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Hardware will never be free. It is substance, and substance comes only at a cost. Data, however–the 1s and 0s that make up the information that is the lifeblood of hardware–is a lot cheaper. There has always been free software, and the internet has made free software ubiquitous. I would bet everyone has at least one free program on their system, whether it is Adobe Reader, AOL Instant Messenger, or some useful tool like Launchy. Some are built to be vehicles for advertising. Some, like Launchy, were created by someone who wanted a simple tool, and then developed into something useful with a life of its own.

David Pogue, the New York Times columnist who wrote “Overseas Calls Made Cheap, If Not Easy,” (login required, or use BugMeNot) believes that phone calling is going the way of instant messenging. And by all appearances, it is. While traditional phones are quick and easy, they aren’t cheap any longer.

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