THINPHONE lets you email messages, and forward files or our links to a telephone.

To: Phone@Thinmail.com
Subject: 8005551212
----
John,

I am going to be a little late to the meeting.

Within a minute, the telephone rings and a human-like voice starts reading your message. The receiver can interrupt or replay the message and can record a response to the message! The number should be a 10 digit number, no spaces, dashes, or parentheses.

You can combine the Number and "@Thinphone.com" into a single email address: XXXXXXXXXX@Thinphone.com, replacing the X's with the 10 digits of a phone number. So the following is equivalent to the previous example:

To: 8005551212@Thinphone.com
----
John,

I am going to be a little late to the meeting.

Delivery Receipt

After the message is sent, you will receive back a short email that the message succeeded or failed.

Attaching Files

Thinphone allows you to send attached files (or Thinmail links) to a telephone. Currently it only converts DOC, HTML, and TXT files to speech, and plays 8kpbs WAV and MP3 files. Make sure the file-type is either "Audio/wav" or "Audio/mp3". Most PC's come with a "sound recorder" accesssory so if you have a microphone, you can record a file to attach. Make sure you set the file properties to "8k Bits/second". We found "ULAW" to work best.

If you don't have a microphone, you can send a Thinphone to yourself, press 2, and record a file, which will be returned to you as a WAV file:

Responses

If the receiver presses "2" they can record a response to your message. You will receive an email back with a WAV file (as a thinned link) if they do respond. On your desktop, you will be able to click and hear the response, provided you have a sound player set up. This is what a reply looks like:

To: You@your.email.address
From: 8005551212@Thinphone.com
Subject: Voice Reply from Telephone Call
----
The receiver has left you a message:

http://www.thinmail.com/tm/v/982798sd-fes/random.wav
Filetype: Audio/wav; Filesize: 33748

Because Thinmail lets you forward WAV links to a phone, even if you get a reply on your text pager, you can forward it to a phone to hear it!

Parallel Thinphoning

Now almost any phone (in the US) has an email address. You can put them in your address book. And, just like you can send email to several people with a single email message, you can send Thinphone messages to several phones with a single email message! It is a quick way to alert friends to a change in schedule, or to conduct a straw poll, or throw a last minute party! You can mix Thinphone addresses with regular email addresses, Thinmail addresses and Thinfax addresses for personal message blasting!

To: 'peters phone' <8005551212@Thinphone.com>,
'Pauls phone'<8005553344@Thinphone.com>,
'Marys phone'<8002215555@Thinphone.com>
----
Jam Session at my house at 9 O clock!

Extension Dialing

Use the "P" to make a 2 second pause in dialing. After the 10 digit number, the dialing system waits for an answer. Any more P's digits, or "#" or "*" are then played as touch-tones to the receiving system. For example

will dial the phone, and after it answers, will dial extension 777, and wait 4 seconds before reading the message.

Billing

We charge only 25c per completed call in US and track your account in our billing section.