Where was Siamak Taghaddos when I needed him?

A couple of years ago when my wife and I were looking into starting a small community newspaper, I got some price quotes for a phone system to service a small office of five to seven employees.

A system with all the bells and whistles including in-house voice-mail accounts could have cost us between $6,000 and $8,000. (Yikes)

Then along came GotVMail.

According to its website, the company, started by Taghaddos and a business partner, offers a software based system usable with any existing phone starting at $9.95 a month.

In a podcast interview with Creative Weblogging editor Anita Campbell on the topic of virtual business, Taghaddos explains the way his system works and how his company happened to create it.

GotVMail provides either a toll free number in North America or a local number world-wide, allows an unlimited number of incoming calls, supplies up to 20 voice mailboxes for different departments or company information, and even lets your caller listen to music while waiting to be transferred.

And since the whole thing is done virtually, without the need for any additional equipment purchase, if I were running that hypothetical newspaper today, my editor could be working in a living room in New York while my graphic arts person is laying out pages in a Seattle coffee house, and no one would know the difference.