27 March 2007

Letter responding to "One Number For All Your Phones" -- NY Times

Here's a letter I sent in which wasn't published:
I read with great interest the recent article about
GrandCentral.com. I just want to point out that this service closely
resembles SimulRing -- a simultaneous ring service that went out of
business several years ago. (See
http://www.thedigest.com/more/146/146-230.html ). My use of SimulRing
attempted to overcome the problem of changing your phone number that
was alluded to. I had one of my (multiple) phone numbers redirect to
the (hidden) SimulRing number and then had this call all the others. I
really liked SimulRing but was disappointed when I lost my phone
number (in addition to the service) when the company went bankrupt. It
might have been good to point out the bankruptcy risk to people
reading the article and contemplating enlisting.


Article Commented on:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01EFDC1E31F936A25750C0A9619C8B63
STATE OF THE ART; One Number For All Your Phones
By DAVID POGUE
Published: March 15, 2007
If you have only one telephone with one phone number, this column won't be of
any interest to you. Skip to another article, you eccentric you.
But first, count your blessings. Millions of people have more than one phone
number these days -- home, work, cellular, hotel room, vacation home, yacht --
and with great complexity comes great hassle. You have to check multiple
answering machines. You miss calls when people try to reach you on your cell
when you're at home (or the other way around). You send around e-mail messages
at work that say, ''On Thursday from 5 to 8:30, I'll be on my cell; for the rest
of the weekend, call me at home.''....
[L2E]