voicemail

Phone Amego is a clever little menu-bar app that integrates your iPhone--or other Bluetooth phone--with your Mac and with the Google Voice service. At its most basic, Phone Amego provides onscreen caller ID (a small window on your Mac displays incoming callers, and you close the window to send the call to voice mail, or you can program it with AppleScript to respond when you speak the name) and enables you to call contacts from your Address Book with just a couple of clicks. There are also basics like a call log, timer, and a hot key for answering calls. … Read more

It was a close call, but California voters yesterday defeated Proposition 19, also known as the "Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010," so we're canceling our S.F. holiday plans and staying in New York. Oh well, at least we still have front-row seats to the World Series riots thanks to the newly appointed Riot Badges on FourSquare.

Speaking of things that are harmful to your health, a new report co-authored by former government chief drugs adviser David Nutt suggests that alcohol is more harmful than heroin.

Professor Nutt judged 20 drugs on 16 degrees of harm that include lasting effects on physical and mental health, social harms including crime, and environmental damage, and alcohol is the most prevalent on this chart, topping other substances like ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, crack, and methylamphetamines.

The results likely have more to do with alcohol being the only legal drug on the list, and cannabis surprisingly ranks fairly high on the list as well, just two under nicotine.

We all know cigarettes are lethal carcinogens, but a new company called Blu Cigs is manufacturing electronic cigarettes aimed at users who want to "smoke" tobacco without the addictive nicotine element.

We're obviously not condoning use of this product, but the tech angle on the device itself is interesting because they use battery-operated atomizers to warm up capsules of flavored liquid that then produce vapor you can inhale, making them technically "legal" to use in non-smoking areas, like on an airplane. Be sure to watch this segment's video to see an actual e-cigarette in action!

After we hit the break (and a small audio hiccup afterward), we have two jaw-dropping video voicemails queued up: the first is from our own Jeff Bakalar, who recorded a video of him and his new wife Stacie at some dreadful resort in who knows where, and the second is a relatively straightforward voicemail from "BMGreatness" that also features a disturbing prop. Check it out, and keep sending your video voicemails to the404(at)cnet.com!

Even in paradise, Jeff is still Jeff. BMGreatness: Please call back and verify the owner of that thingie.

On Jeff's last day on The 404 before he gets married, Justin unfortunately is out sick, but we've got something better! Ms. Natali Del Conte fills in, and we talk about life after getting married. Jeff admits he'll miss his days as a single guy. Don't worry, though, we'll be around to make sure he gets into enough trouble with his soon-to-be wife.

We do get into some tech stories today, and if you can't tell from the giant picture above, it's about the PSP Phone... or PlayStation Phone. Whatever it's called, we can't really figure out whether the photo, which was leaked on Engadget last night, is legit. It looks like it could be a Photoshop job, as there is nothing about the user interface that says PlayStation. But Jeff wonders out loud whether the oval-shapped indentions in the middle are really analog joysticks? And Natali wonders what's a analog joystick again?

After that, we get into some more Cablevision versus Fox outrage, which has stirred up a lot of questions from non-geeks these days because of the World Series. Scores of people in the Tri-State area are desperately trying to find ways to catch the games, which are still blocked from Cablevision customers. Jeff and Natali literally go on a tirade, while Wilson wants to know how this affects the debate about Net neutrality. (Wilson doesn't subscribe to cable video.)

Finally, we get to some voice mails about how Wilson dresses the best... strange. Maybe it's because he has a larger wardrobe that has more variety than black or flannel shirts? And we also get to a video voice mail from the self-proclaimed 404 Grandpa. Keep those video voice mails or video mails or video mails voices coming!

Pardon our dust, 404 video viewers! We're right in the middle of a grand studio makeover! The 404 clubhouse is getting all new gear, including wide-angle lenses and a brand new HD tricaster so you can see our radio-friendly faces in high-definition! Actually, we'll let you determine whether that's good or bad, but bear with us for the next few days as we finish setting everything up.

To make it up to you (and in honor of our favorite holiday), we're giving away original 404 art courtesy of the incredibly talented Blake Stevenson! If you just started listening to the show, Blake is the unofficial artist of The 404 that donated his talents to our official logo as well as many of the posters you see in our studio! He recently created the Halloween poster you see on this page and we're really excited to give it away! To enter, all you have to do is follow Blake on Twitter and RT this message:

"RT this & follow @blakestevenson to get some original @the404 ink! http://goo.gl/1XXG"

...and that's it! You have all weekend to do that for a chance to win some awesome art from your favorite podcast; we'll announce the winners next week--good luck!

Now onto today's stories. The first one is almost NSFW so I'll skip that for now, but the next one raises controversy about the recently released first person-shooter game, Medal of Honor. The EA reboot is a gritty take on the current conflict in Afghanistan, and the prerelease even let you play as Taliban soldiers attacking the U.S. Special Forces.

EA has since renamed the Taliban the "opposing force," but the post-censorship becomes a divisive issue for The 404. Jeff doesn't have a problem with it, Wilson thinks it's just "too real," and I'm stuck in the middle like a preteen begging his parents to stop the madness. Tune into the first half to get the full story!

After the break, we hit another milestone for the show: our first ever listener-submitted VIDEO VOICE MAIL! As you know, listeners usually call in and leave an audio voice mail that we play on the air, but Blazer from Cincinnati had the genius idea to post a YouTube link to show us a skateboard trick he created and named after the show!

It's a no-comply pressure flip that he calls The 404 Flip, and we'll definitely show Tony Hawk when he returns to the show next Friday! In the meantime, we'd love to receive more video voice mails, so upload your best messages to YouTube and send us a link at the404(at)cnet(dot)com. Of course we understand that not everyone has access to a video/Web camera, so audio voice mails will certainly be accepted as well--the number's the same: 1-866-404-CNET. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday for the triumphant return of Ms. Natali Del Conte!

CNET TV's Brian Tong discusses the latest in Apple news, rumors, tips, and tricks. This week Brian sorts out the new iPod rumors, Apple TV (or iTV) rumors, touch-screen iMac rumors, and Apple's patent for security devices based on sensor detection. You'll also learn how to retrieve visual voice mails that may not show up on your iPhone and get a look at the Netflix App for iPhone.

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If your friends are talkers, you're going to want listen up. YouMail is a visual voice mail service that lets you view and listen to missed calls on your mobile phone or online in any order you like. Some other features include customized greetings and call blocking.

This week's illustrious giveaway graces not 1, but 10 lucky winners with a six-month subscription to YouMail's $17.99 per month Read-It 150 plan, which goes a step further to translate up to 150 voice messages per month into text.

YouMail will work with any mobile phone, and there are … Read more

AT&T recently launched a service that will convert English and Spanish language voice mail to text. Powered by Nuance Communications, the service will then deliver the messages via SMS, e-mail, or both. You can then choose to respond, either by returning the call or replying via text or e-mail. The service costs $9.99 a month, on top of your existing plan, and you can still dial in to your voice mail as usual if you wish.

One of the best Mac OS X tools in my arsenal of iPhone utilities is Ecamm Network's PhoneView, which lets you retrieve your call history, export contacts, play and save voice memos, search and save SMS messages, play and export music, download photos, and create, edit, and save notes. It even lets you use your iPhone as a disk drive.

Now an update to Phoneview has added three new key features that make the app even more useful.

The first new features let you retrieve MMS messages and view them later on your computer. (The previous versions only handled … Read more

YouMail's visual voice mail service adroitly blends voice message management in the cloud with an on-phone in-box for hands-on filing. After authorizing YouMail to handle your voice mails, you'll be able to view those messages in any order from the app's in-box. Contrast this to the traditional method of calling an access number, inputting your PIN, and listening to your messages in chronological order.

After a disappointingly rudimentary initial offering, YouMail has boned up on the navigation and activities that users can do online. It now has push notification for new messages, the ability to delete messages, … Read more