How to receive voicemail and faxes anywhere in the world
Almost everyone knows the benefit of having several ‘junk’ email accounts. Free services like hotmail.com and yahoo.com give you the ability to use an account for free without cluttering your personal email account with solicitations and other garbage emails from marketers.
Well, you can do the same thing with voice mail and faxes! The great thing about this service is that you could set up a free voice mail account and not have to worry about getting called at home by twenty recruiters when you submit your resume online.
Your voicemails and faxes are sent to you as attachments in your email. You listen to the messages with software you can download free of charge.With a virtual voicemail service, your recruiters, friends, and family would never again have to memorize a new phone number every time you take another assignment. In about five minutes time you’ll have a phone number that follows you anywhere in the world, as long as you have access to the internet.
With most services, you can even get your voicemail when you’re on the road and away from your computer. Some service providers even let you forward faxes to another fax number if you don’t have access to your email.
MaxEmail
This service is one of my favorites because it offers to many features that
would be useful for healthcare travelers:
The trade off is that their service isn’t completely free… but it’s extremely reasonable for all of the features you get. In my experience, the free services don’t offer you nearly the same benefits. It’s just $10 activation and $14.85 per year.
If I were a traveler, I’d choose this service for the ability to access my messages and faxes while away from my computer. I also like the fact that faxes and emails are sent in formats that don’t require extra software to download. You could set up the service to send your messages and faxes to a hotmail account and access them from the hospital’s computer or at a library. You can even access your messages directly from the website.
The free services usually require special software that you’d have to download to your computer before you’re able to listen to messages or view the faxes. Obviously that’s going to be a lot more cumbersome if you’re using the hospital’s computer.
MaxEmail gives travelers the ability to be truly mobile and receive everything you need even if you don’t have your own computer or you temporarily don’t have access to the internet.
In my opinion, those benefits alone more than justify the tiny price.
These are really the same company. J2 communications bought efax.com a while back but their services are slightly different. Both of them offer free versions that allow you to receive faxes. Both of them require you to download proprietary software. The software required to view faxes is free but you always need to keep in mind:
Whenever you download software from the internet, free or not, you run the risk that it could cause any number of problems with your computer.
Personally, I have had very good luck with software that I’ve downloaded from the internet. But it’s your responsibility to take care of your computer, not mine. You have to take your own precautions and judge the risks of downloading free software. After all, you’re the one who will have to deal with the repercussions, not me.
I’ve had an efax number for a long time and it’s always worked flawlessly. The only disadvantage to the efax and j2 service is that you have to have their software to use the service. The way they manage to keep their services free is by putting a small advertisement at the top of the window when you open the software. But believe me, you’ll hardly notice it and after you close the software it’s gone.
If you want to use on of the two free services, I suggest giving www.j2.com a try. It’s really the same software that efax uses but you also get the ability to receive voicemail.
If you’re thinking of buying the premium service offered by either j2 or efax you should really consider the pricing advantages of MaxEmail. If you’re going to pay for the service, you can’t beat maxemail’s benefits.
Other services you might consider:
www.dodora.net
www.fawaway.com
www.digitalmail.com
www.faxmate.com
A totally free service
www.tpc.int/fax_cover_auto.html
This service has been around a long time. The only problem is that you have
to first check to make sure that the area code of your recipient is on their
list. In other words they can’t send your fax everywhere.
Although it’s completely free and you don’t even need to sign up to use the service, it’s very cumbersome and you won’t be able to receive faxes or voicemail while you’re on the road. I’d sign up with one of the other providers.
www.interpage.net/sub-wwwfax.html
The webpage above is supposed to be used for demonstration purposes only but
apparently you can send a fax anywhere in the country with this service. You
can only use it a certain number of times before it locks you out for a day
or two.
The demonstration page listed above only lets you send a simple text message but if you’re in a jam and you need to send a fax right away, this should get it done. I tried it out and it worked fine. Don’t expect the fax that comes out on the other end to look fancy and you can forget about sending attachments or anything other than a simple message.
What About Fax Software
There are plenty of software packages available that enable you to send faxes directly from your computer and through your phone line.
Here’s where I think that the MaxEmail service or some of the other services on the internet surpass regular fax software:
With the www.maxemail.com service you don’t even need to have your own computer! You can check it from the hospital or from a friend’s house. A lot of apartment complexes have computer stations that you can use. You don’t need special software. I think it’s ideal for healthcare travelers.
How to scan documents into your computer without a scanner
Scanners are great tools. They start at around $60 and you should buy one if you can afford it. Like most electronic gadgets, you can spend a lot of money for the best quality. You should be able to get a decent one for less than $100.
But what if you don’t have a scanner and you want to fax a copy of your BLS card and your current nursing license to a recruiter? Rather than but a scanner you could sign up for one of the fax services and then send yourself a fax. You could send it from the hospital or from a Mailboxes Etc. location.
You might be wondering, “Why not fax it directly to the recruiter?” When you send yourself a fax, you’ll be able to save the attachment for future use. You could either send the fax from your computer or just email the attachment to your recruiter.
One of the trade offs for being a traveler is coping with frequent paperwork. Every new assignment requires paperwork. Every travel company requires paperwork. Face it… hospitals and agencies require a mountain of paperwork from you.
Why not make things easy on yourself and start compiling these documents into a folder that you can easily find again. Just imagine being able to switch companies at a moments notice to take a higher offer. You can make it happen when you have all of your documentation together on your computer. You’ll be able to start assignments earlier and get state licenses quicker.
Being mobile give you the flexibility and power to go after the best assignments and the best offers. You’ll save yourself time, energy, and frustration.