Dialmycalls.com is Perfect for Coaches and More!
David Batcherlor, owner of dialmycalls.com , contacted me a few days ago because he felt his product was perfect for Little League coaches. While I agree with him, I would certainly not restrict it to Little League Coaches! I would recommend this product for ANYONE that has multiple people to call w/ the same message! This thing rocks!
Easy Set Up
As it so happened, we had rain tonight and our entire district’s all-star games were canceled. The perfect time to give dialmycalls.com a test run! First I navigated over to the site and quickly signed up. Took all of a minute. Once in I clicked on the the Setup a group call link on the right. Step one had me select my free service, step 2 had me record my message. I had the choice of recording my own message, uploading a wav file or having them convert my text to voice.
The service is free for 1 phone call a day to up to 25 people, so they drop a short ad in the front and back of your announcement, but it is really not obtrusive at all! Plus, you can select a male or female voice for the message. Anyone want to take a guess which voice I wanted to hear?
Record You Message
I selected to record my own voice message to broadcast to the board of directors of our league. I clicked, add recording, and ding-aling my phone rang! It prompted me to record my message, which I did, and then hit pound. I could listen to it, rerecord or simply hang up. Done. It took me 10 times as long to type this as it took to actually perform the task.
Add Your Names
Then I added 11 names, phone numbers , and email addresses . Yes, one of the options I selected was to backup your voice message w/ an email wav file just in case they didn’t get your voice mail . (Remember the days when you could avoid people? Those days are over!) This was actually a bit of a chore. It was frustrating because my only options were load phone numbers w/ no names (fast but I knew I would need these numbers for other lists in the future), load names/numbers/emails, or upload a data file.
The data file option would have been nice, but I would have had to have it in excel or .cvs format. Who has that? Would have been much nicer if I could have integrated my data from my outlook, or even better, directly from my cell phone ! Either way, it wasn’t all that bad, and I am sure they are working on some kind of option similar to this.
Anyway, once I had all the names in, I hit the send call now button. I could have scheduled a time to send it, but I chose instantly. It was truly instantly. Before my fingers had time to leave the keyboard my phone was ringing w/ my message and all the board members quickly called me to let me know they got it!
It was FANTASTIC! BEAUTIFUL! What a relief! I took 11 calls and turned them into 1!!!!!!
One thing I forgot to mention, I was able to put the contacts into groups. I created the group Board of Directors, directly from the form that I was inputting the names from! It could not have been more convenient.
Group Administration
Once I completed this, I went to the groups/names admin page. I clicked a check mark next to the names of the board members who also had players on my all-star team and bada-bing bada-boom, created and added them to my all-star team announcement group! I then repeated the chore of adding the additional players names to that team’s group. It was quite simple. I have people in more than one group, but only one entry. That is kind of sweet.
One more thing, the wav file is not actually emailed to your list. A link is. This is nice because there is no need for the receiver to actually open a file. The file is hosted by the dialmycalls.com server and played instantly.
They also offer premium options for larger groups and the prices are very affordable, starting at only 4 1/2 cents a call! They also have a reporting function and what appears to be a fantastic support page.
Gone forever are the days of the phone tree that always broke! Today, we have dialmycalls.com .
Flip Video Rules!
I have heard a lot of bloggers talking about how much they love their Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black) . Now I see why!
I just got mine today and literally within 2 minutes I was recording high quality videos! This is going to be one of the best tools I have ever purchased. It is pocket sized and very affordable, only about $130 or so.
The kicker? It has a built in USB adapter that plugs right into my laptop. Software automatically loads on my PC to upload and manage the video, and I can either have my players view what they are doing wrong immediately, or I can record posts for this blog, or both!!!!
I am very excited about this little gadget. It should make this blog much more interesting and exciting.
How have you put your flip video to use? Please let us know!
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