Visual Voicemail on the Cheap

When Apple announced the iPhone back in January one of the features that I found most compelling was "Visual Voicemail". This feature allows you to browse your voicemail messages like an email inbox: you can see the caller for each message and play the voicemails in any order. This eliminates the annoying calls to your voicemail, wading through messages to get to the one that matters, listening to the annoying voice telling you how many you have left. Unfortunately, I don't have 1200 dollars to spend on a phone / contract this year, so no visual voicemail for me.

That has changed, however, thanks to Callwave. They have several widgets available for all of the major platforms. One allows free texting while the other allows, you guessed it, visual voicemail. Callwave replaces the voicemail service on your phone with their own service (for free) and allows you to browse messages from your computer. All the functionality of the iPhone with none of the price tag.