Christian Nimsky

Back when I traveled a lot I tried out this new service called SimulScribe because it represented a much better way to triage and return voicemail after landing at the airport, where it is difficult to write down voicemails you have received in-flight and return the calls as you catch a cab.  Now called PhoneTag (sorry guys, your new brand just doesn’t resonate with me so I’m going to refer to it as SimulScribe hereforward) the service takes voicemail and transcribes it as text which is sent to you as an email, along with the original attachment should you need to hear it yourself.  It is very accurate and as much a “life changer” as TiVo is for TV viewing. 

I was so enthusiastic that I got my wife an account of her own for her birthday and we are now happy users.  We wanted to apply the same functionality to our home phone to deal with the endless stream of soccer practice updates, voicemails from the kids’ school, playdate proposals from BFFs (best-friends-forever), etc.  but without paying for a third account.  We found a way to do so by capitalizing on one of SimulScribe’s most useful features.  Read on…

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Well this note won’t move markets or anything since we’re talking just a handful of users here, but Nimsky family ops here in California - after long and arduous discussions - has moved its email hosting from Google Apps For Your Domain to a hosted Zimbra implementation provided by 01.com.

Zimbra rocks, and I’m glad they got picked up by Yahoo.  For more on why we moved and some tips for making the jump yourself, read on.  If you could care less about switching email, skip the click.

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The family CTO role is more than buying new gadgets - you get to deal with stuff after it stops working.  A couple years ago when I worked far from home we bought two Globalstar phones so we’d have a way to communicate in a natural disaster.  We also like to use one for keeping in touch with family when we go places that normal cellphones can’t reach.  Over the past few months I’ve read about Globalstar’s satellite issues but I thought they were more theoretical.  On our last camping trip I found out firsthand that they are very real.

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